


What Was Lost

by carnivorousteeth



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Ancient elven shit, Deep Roads, F/M, Spoilers, The Fade, post-Inquisition, you thought Corypheus was crazy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:32:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnivorousteeth/pseuds/carnivorousteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More than a month after Corypheus's defeat, Thedas is slowly rebuilding itself from the ashes of its near-destruction.  However, the same cannot be said of Inquisitor Velatha Lavellan.  Devastated by Solas's disappearance and haunted by unanswered questions, she has thrown herself into her continued work with the Inquisition as best she can.  Although, when news of Solas's whereabouts surfaces, she can't resist the temptation to track him down and learn the truth.  The journey she embarks upon and secrets she uncovers, however, may just be far more than she bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Raven's Song

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set roughly a month or so following Corypheus's defeat at the hands of Inquisitor Lavellan and will contain so many spoilers, so I'd encourage anyone who doesn't want major plot points revealed to finish up Inquisition before reading! That said, however, I felt the need to explore what could happen after the end of the game - particularly, but not limited to, that horrible cliffhanger they left us with. This story is going to include primarily elements of Inquisition, however, characters and plot points from Origins and Dragon Age II are going to be folded in as events progress. I have a very expansive adventure planned for these characters, so thank you to anyone who takes the time to read and stick with the story!

Inquisitor Lavellan sat perched upon the railing of the balcony extending from her private quarters, one knee hugged tightly to her chest, the other dangling carelessly in the open air.  The wind pulled gently at her slight frame and at her hair, tossing deep crimson half-curls across her nose and around her shoulders.  Such a position probably wasn’t the wisest place to spend the evening, nor would many in Skyhold choose to brave the couple hundred foot fall that threatened should her balance falter; on a warm night such as this, however, and with a moon so full and bright, Velatha couldn’t imagine spending it locked away inside.

In fact, she rarely spent her nights inside save when it was time to sleep.  Ages ago, when she still lived with her clan, she would sometimes abandon her tent to sleep on the grass below the moon and stars.  Once, so far in the past when the world still made sense to her, she and Solas had slept on a pile of blankets atop one of the battlements on a night very like this one.  That night, they had watched stars fall from the heavens over the tips of the Frostbacks.

It was funny to think that only a few months separated her from the woman she had been then, as opposed to the worn creature she felt like now.

She swallowed the memory, expending more effort than she’d like to admit attempting to push it down below the surface.  Throughout the festivities following Corypheus’s defeat she’d done the same; with a little drink now and again, she’d managed to get just sloshed enough each night that she could almost enjoy herself, that she could hide the raw hole that had opened in her heart.  

Nobody cast her sidelong glances or hovered over her, attempting to make sure she was alright.  Each of her friends had asked once, in private, how well she was holding up.  She’d told each of them the same thing:  “I’ll be fine, really.  I’ve already got more than enough on my mind.”

The only person who’d seemed unsatisfied with her answer was Varric, but even he never pressed the point.  Still, Velatha knew he was supposed to return to Kirkwall at the beginning of last week, not keep sitting in the hall, scratching on parchment and swindling anyone brave enough to sit down with a deck of cards.

Elves were supposed to be the perceptive ones; then again, making a living in the merchant’s guild would do that to a person.

The Inquisitor’s watercolor green eyes scanned the starlit horizon, probing the mountaintops and shaded valleys for...she wasn’t sure what anymore.  Ever since he disappeared, she refused to allow herself the hope that Solas would ever return.  He hadn’t even deigned to say goodbye, so she had no reason to fool herself into thinking otherwise.  In fact, for the most part she refused to let herself think of him at all.  Now that all the celebrations were over, she had too much on her plate what with dodging nobility left and right and trying to raise some kind of order from the ashes of Thedas to indulge her grief.  Too many eyes were upon her day and night for her to give way to her tears, her silent wishes.

Still, he lingered in her mind, like mist above the dead waters of the Fallow Mire.

With a quiet, heavy sigh, Velatha swung her leg over the balcony and hauled herself back into her bedchamber.  It seemed the stars would offer her no comfort this night.

She crossed the room to the round oak table occupying one corner, twitching her fingers ahead of her as she walked.  The half-burnt candle stub in the center of the table flickered to life and illuminated a stack of sealed missives and letters that awaited her attention.  Whatever fool notion she’d had about the Inquisition no longer being needed after Corypheus was neutralized had long since been disabused by the sheer number of people seeking her advice on how to move forward, politically, militarily, personally.  Each time she answered a batch of these requests, a new one was dropped before her to take its place.

The Inquisitor took up her vigil in the swaying candlelight, the lonesome silence soon consumed by the scratch of her quill and the gentle sigh of the wind playing through the fortress spires.

* * *

“Inquisitor!”

The call echoed through Skyhold’s main hall, reverberating off of the stone walls and filling the marginal quiet.  Velatha, who had previously had her nose buried in the copy of _Hard in Hightown_ she’d promised to read, looked up in immediate alarm at the sound of Leliana’s voice.  Her advisor, for the time being at least, was walking quickly up the red carpet adorning the center of the hall with possibly the largest smile on her face that Velatha had ever seen.

“Inquisitor, I have news,” she said when she reached the elf’s table.

“Is something wrong?” Velatha asked on instinct.  She felt silly as soon as the words left her, but she’d been asking what was wrong for so long now that it had become a habit.

“Quite the opposite, in fact.  It is good you are sitting down,” Leliana teased, pulling out a seat for herself.  “One of my agents stationed in the Arbor Wilds just reported spotting a bald elf investigating the area around the Temple of Mythal.  It could be coincidence, or perhaps we have finally discovered Solas’s whereabouts.”

Velatha had been on her feet again at “bald.”

“Are you certain?” she asked over the sound of her thunderous heart.

“Quite certain, yes,” Leliana answered.  She stood up again as well, since apparently this wasn’t the sitting down kind of news she’d anticipated.  “Shall I send someone to investigate further?”

“Yes,” Velatha said immediately, although she changed tack and added, “No.  I mean, yes.  I mean─”

The Inquisitor trailed off with a frustrated noise and pressed the heels of her palms to her forehead.  That was literally the last piece of news she could have possibly expected Leliana to bring her.  She knew that the spymaster had agreed to pass Solas’s description out to her agents in the hope that they might one day find him, but she had never expected anything to come of it.  A mage as talented as he was could stay hidden as long as he wanted to, and something told the Inquisitor that, so soon after his disappearance, he wasn’t yet ready to show himself again.

Unless whatever he was doing at the Temple had subsumed his attention so thoroughly that he had become careless.

After several long moments, and several gentle, unanswered questions of “Inquisitor?”, Velatha lowered her hands from her face.  Her eyes darted to the side, suspicion passing through them like a swift shadow.  “No,” she said with an absent kind of certainty, “don’t send anyone.  I’ll look into this myself.”

A silence, electric with surprise, settled between the two women.  At length, Leliana ventured, “Inquisitor...are you so sure that is wise?  We are in the middle of rebuilding…”

“I know, but─”  Velatha pulled up short, unsure how to continue her thought without sounding too selfish.  It was selfish, she knew, to want to run off to find her former lover when the world still asked so much of her, even if she had repeatedly risked her own life to save the lives of...well, everybody.  There really was no good way to say, “I saved your arse, so give me this one.”

Leliana, thankfully, seemed to sense exactly what was moving through her head.  Her concerned expression softened into a small, knowing smile, and her voice lowered slightly.  “The report is two days old, but the temple holds many secrets.  If I send word now, my people could intercept him before he vanishes again.”

Velatha turned her pale eyes onto her spymaster’s, mingled hope and sympathy staring back at her.  It was all she could do to keep her own disappointment out of her gaze.  She knew that Leliana was right, that there was still too much to be done for her to go running off for no reason, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t want to.

After a long moment, the Inquisitor steeled herself, took a subtle deep breath, and said, “No, don’t intercept him.  Have them watch for now.  I want to know why he returned to that temple.”

Leliana’s ginger eyebrows lofted.  “You suspect he is up to something, Inquisitor?” she asked.

Velatha set her jaw against the knot in her stomach.  Turning her back on her advisor, she began to move off toward the door to her chambers.  Quietly, but loudly enough for her voice to carry, she said, “I have no doubt.”

* * *

Varric sat at one of the tables lining Skyhold’s main hall, Iron Bull to his left, Cole to his right.  The hall was shrouded in darkness; at the dwarf’s insistence, the candles upon the table remained unlit.

“Trust me, we need the element of surprise,” he had explained.

The three had been waiting in near silence for the better part of an hour.  Cole, the poor kid, had been dozing on and off the whole time.  He was still getting used to the limitations of his human form, even months after committing to a life of mediocrity just like everybody else.  Well, in his case, maybe “mediocrity” wasn’t really the word.

The Bull, after hearing why Varric had convened the only remaining adventurers at Skyhold, had shut up and stayed that way without complaint.  However, the night was dragging on, and he’d been growing restless.  Shifting in his seat for the tenth time in two minutes, he leaned a little closer to Varric and, as quietly as he was capable, inquired, “You sure about this?”

The corner of the dwarf’s mouth twitched upward in a sad smirk nobody could see.  “Listen,” he whispered back.

The ringing silence in the hall was broken, only just barely, by the quiet, deliberate lift of a latch.  One of the doors, they all knew which one, at the far end of the hall swung outward and closed again a moment later.  Footsteps like leaves falling on dry grass whispered over the stones.

Varric struck a small tinder and lit a candle.  “Going somewhere?” he called, without turning to see who’d entered.

Velatha Lavellan froze in her tracks and hissed, “Shit.”

“You didn’t think you could pull one over on us, did you, Inquisitor?” Varric chuckled as he rose to his feet.  He’d seen this conversation coming days ago, as soon as he’d rifled through Leliana’s latest batch of incoming reports.  The situation was anything but funny, but he wanted to keep it light for at least a little while, if he could.

Velatha, however, didn’t look amused.  “What are you doing here, Varric?  What’s going on?” she asked, suspicion coloring her tone.  Her narrowed eyes moved between the dwarf, the qunari, and the progressively waking boy still seated behind the two.

“Could ask you the same thing,” Varric pointed out.

Velatha remained silent.

“C’mon, Boss.  We know what was in Red’s report,” Bull admitted, bluntly but not unkindly.  He didn’t see the point in beating around the bush when everybody was clearly on the same page.

Still, Velatha’s lips pursed at his words and she turned her eyes away from them all.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to go after Solas?  In the middle of the night, alone, without telling anyone?” Varric pushed.  “You are still the Inquisitor.  This place would fall apart without you holding up the rafters.”

One of the slender muscles along the Inquisitor’s neck twitched momentarily.  “And what would you have me do, Varric?” she asked at length.  Her voice was calm enough, but restrained.

“Well, if it were up to me,” the dwarf answered easily, “you’d forget the blighter and lead the world into the next golden age.  But...I’m not gonna be the guy who tries to make your decisions for you.  I’m just saying, maybe we should think this through.”

“Are you saying I haven’t already?” Velatha challenged, finally turning to look at them all again.

Varric held up his hands in quick surrender.  Actually, he imagined she’d spent the past several days unable to think about anything else.  “Not at all.  We all know you want to find Solas.  After the shit he pulled, I can’t blame you.  You need answers─”

“This is about more than just answers, Varric,” the Inquisitor interrupted.  “You saw those reports.  He’s been at that temple for over a week.  Something is going on.”

“Which Leliana’s people could easily deal with,” the dwarf pointed out.

“Solas is still a mage, a good one, and he knows more about what’s in that temple, or what _could_ be in it, than anyone.  I’m not leaving a bunch of scouts to address this.”

“From where I’m standing, it’s starting to sound like you think Chuckles is up to something nefarious.”

“I didn’t─”  The Inquisitor cut herself off, her mouth hanging open slightly as she worked around for something to say.  Varric could practically hear the battle cries from the war raging behind her eyes.

He let out a quiet sigh.  “I get it.  You don’t wanna think the worst of him.  But that begs the question─are you running after him because of what you know, or because of what you feel?”

Slowly, the Inquisitor’s eyes moved back to her companions.  There could be little doubt about what was going through her mind.  She hadn’t exactly confided in anyone since Corypheus’s defeat and Solas’s disappearance, but she’d always been the type who could tell an epic tale without uttering a single word.  It was the consequence, Varric had decided, of an expressive face and an honest heart.

The expression she wore now, the conflict and the uncertainty etched into the shadows of her face, reminded him of something she’d said to him after that elf had let her down.

_“Of course it hurts.  It probably always will, but it’s not the pain that bothers me.  It’s not knowing why or what happens next.”_

At length, after the silence that had settled in the hall had almost grown comfortable, the Inquisitor softly but firmly said, “I have to know what he’s doing, Varric.  I have to see what was worth all this with my own eyes.”

An easy smile overtook the dwarf then, and a somewhat mischievous glint leapt into his brown eyes.  “So a little bit of both.  Maybe I should come with you, then.  Ancient temples, secrecy, mysterious disappearances─sounds like the makings of a great story to me.”

“Better let me join up, too, Boss.  Never know what kind of weird shit can come crawling out of ancient ruins,” Iron Bull put in, crossing his massive arms across his even more massive chest.  The Inquisitor opened her mouth to speak, but before she had the chance to say a word, he added, “Krem can look after the Chargers, no problem.”

“Solas was my friend, too.  If we’re going to find him, I want to come,” Cole declared, finally rising to his feet.  All eyes immediately turned back to him, and he seemed to waver briefly beneath all the attention.

“I think that’s settled,” Varric said after a moment.  He turned back to the Inquisitor and wasn’t altogether surprised to see her smiling.

She looked to each of her friends, her eyes resting briefly on their determined expressions, and seemed to stand a little taller than she had in a very long time.  With a little of the old Velatha beginning to shine through the cracks in her armor, she said, “Then what are we waiting for?”


	2. What Lies Buried

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end of the chapter for translations.

Solas sat back on his haunches, one hand gripping the haft of his staff, the other planted firmly on his knee.  The songs of exotic avians, rarely heard by the ears of men in recent ages, floated among the treetops, but he took no notice. His narrowed eyes were trained instead on his own reflection, a furrow between his dark brows so deep that the skin threatened never to become smooth again.

For all his unbreakable concentration, and all his staring, the cracked Eluvian refused to yield its secrets.

From the moment he had arrived in the Arbor Wilds, the elf had made the kind of thorough study of the Temple of Mythal that modern scholars could only dream about. He had explored and roughly charted the immediate surrounding area as well as taken note of the types of plants and animals which thrived in its shadow. He’d begun undertaking a systematic exploration of the temple, made etchings of every single inscription he found and translated the bulk of many of them. He had even amassed in the main hall a collection of every strange, ancient, or clearly magical artifact he could carry for later examination and experimentation.

Somewhere, somehow, there was a key to fixing and activating the mirror that didn't involve the empty Well of Sorrows.

Several more fruitless minutes passed before the taut muscles surrounding Solas's eyes began to relax, and as they did, he released a defeated sigh. If there was any clue to be found, he supposed he wasn't likely to uncover it by examining his own sour expression. Reluctantly, and with the movements of a much older man, he straightened up.

It was only when he turned to regard the open temple chamber behind him that he realized he had not moved for hours.  When he’d begun his scrutiny of the Eluvian, the sun was still high in its arc across the sky.  Now it brushed the horizon, its orange rays only just visible beyond the edge of the canopy above.  The temple, formerly bathed in green and golden light, gathered shadows unto itself like a cloak wrapped against the cold.

With another sigh, Solas stepped away from the mirror and walked back to the central chamber of the outer temple, occasionally leaning on his staff to give his stiff knees some reprieve.  He was coming to know the main area of the temple quite intimately, enough that he no longer needed its landmarks to guide him from one large, dark room to another.  Still, the perimeter areas, those with roofs, had darkened much more quickly than the inner sanctum, so he was forced to use his staff as a torch long before entering the high, vaulted room serving as both his study and sanctuary.

He passed by the neat, semi-categorized array of artifacts laid out across the upper half of the chamber and seated himself upon his bedroll, disheveled from several nights’ use and not a single attempt at making it up afterward.  Giving the staff a brief, routine sort of shake, he watched as the bright orange flames dancing around its head, three intricately intertwined polished branches, leapt into a low, wide bowl a few feet away.  Following that, he set the staff gently upon the stone beside him.

The elf quickly leaned over and used a couple long fingers to snag his pack and drag it over to him.  From it he extracted one of the last small loaves of bread he’d brought with him and a couple of sausages, and following that, he spent the next handful of minutes rooting around for the last of his dried fruit to round out the meal.  

His actions had every air of a man doing everything he could to remain occupied, to avoid the spaces between moments which were usually reserved for breathing and idle thinking.

After a supper which, to Solas, seemed to have flown by abnormally quickly, he gave up attempts to busy himself for the night and finally laid his bald head on his crumpled blanket.  His mental wrestling match with the Eluvian had drained him more than he’d anticipated, and if he were to be at all useful the next day, he would need to rest and replenish his faculties.  It was primarily due to this exhaustion, among other things too painful to consider, that he decided to let sleep take him wherever it saw fit.  He had yet to explore the temple in the Fade, but he didn’t dare make an attempt while he was anything but alert, focused, and receptive to the knowledge such a journey would inevitably offer.

So, for the first time in a long time, Solas gave himself over to his dreams.

* * *

_“...so much we can learn about our people here from the architecture alone,” he was explaining, his soft voice filled with wonder.  “The ingenuity required to construct a building of this magnitude is staggering, to say nothing at all of the flourishes which lend it its character and purpose.  Some of the stonework, you can see, was aided by magic, but the mosaics were clearly rendered by hand.  It is evident in the tiny irregularities, tiles mislaid by degrees because the artist, at once thrilled and humbled by the opportunity to dedicate his work to his goddess, could not stop his hands from shaking as he placed them.”_

_He extended a hand, let his fingertips brush the edges of a greenish blue tile set into a larger image of Andruil, goddess of the hunt and sacrifice._

_“What else do you see?” asked a voice from somewhere behind him, curiosity, and something warmer, hugging the edges of its velvet tone._

_Solas turned to face the voice, and at once he felt as though he were seeing through his own eyes and observing from some point outside of his body.  The shock of seeing her face in such sharp relief, in such unimaginable clarity, nearly tore him from the dream altogether.  The scene shimmered and swayed, darkening slightly with his discomfort, and for a moment he almost took control and dissolved it entirely._

_But, for all his nobility, for all he once was, he was a man now, and he was subject to the kind of foolish longing to which only men could enslave themselves._

_Solas, whose consciousness had seized the Fade like a clenched fist, eased his hold on the scene.  The events resumed, the light somehow brighter, the figures’ movements somehow slower than they had been._

_All of his attention remained on Velatha, on his memory’s rendition of the woman he told himself he would never see again.  Clear sunlight streamed through the vaulted arches to her right, perfectly illuminating her every detail.  Her blood red hair shone a dark copper beneath the dazzling rays, one loose end curving against her cheek, one thick portion tucked behind her pointed ear.  Her pale green eyes glittered, long, dark lashes sweeping over them as she watched him, hungry for his knowledge.  Her face, with its imperial cheekbones, delicate brows, and pointed chin might have been intimidating, even austere, save for the gentle, almost reverent expression lingering over its every ridge and curve._

_Solas wasn’t surprised to see that he still pictured her with her Vallaslin, greenish-black markings that, she explained, she thought were a dedication to Dirthamen.  With a measure of shame, he knew it was because he had never seen her happy after the night he had taken them from her._

_“Solas,” the dream Velatha said softly, after a long time seemed to have passed, “you’re staring…”_

_The elf beside Solas, at once himself and yet not himself, let a tender smile turn the corners of his lips.  “Era seranna ma, emma lath,” he said simply before reaching out to lay a hand on Velatha’s waist.  He stepped closer to her, and she leaned easily into his chest as she had done hundreds of times before.  “I wanted to return to this place so that we may learn from it together, but it seems that in your presence all I am capable of discerning are its imperfections.”_

_Roses bloomed over Velatha’s cheeks.  “Sweet talker,” she accused gently.  The dream Solas moved to look away from her, but her hand slipped over his cheek and held him fast._

_The world around him shimmered and flickered as the real Solas resisted the images he was witnessing.  The two figures began to blur and distort, growing darker around the edges all the time until they were nothing more than black holes in the landscape, devouring all they touched.  The Temple of Mythal folded in on itself and began to disappear, swallowed up by the growing darkness until there was nothing left._

* * *

Wearily, Solas pushed himself into a sitting position and let his face drop into his hands.  His fingertips rubbed firmly at his temples and then along the bridge of his nose before he dug his knuckles into his eyes.  It was a clumsy attempt to remove the lingering impressions of his dream, faded pictures moving slowly in the darkness, like sunspots.

It had been a mistake, thinking he could simply drift through the Fade without it showing him something he did not want to see.  The Fade was sustained by dreams, emotions, imagination, and each day was a struggle to keep the Inquisitor from taking command of all of those things.  She persistently invaded his thoughts during every unoccupied moment, and while he was occupied, he still felt drawn to her.  Sometimes the sensation was almost physical, like there was a string tied round his heart, and she stood half a world away, tugging on the other end.

Knowing sleep would not come to him again, and not caring to try for it, he discarded his blanket and pushed himself to his feet.  The only way for him to uphold his dedication to his task was to put Velatha out of his mind, and the only way to do that was to wrap it wholly and completely around something else.  He collected the bowl of flames, the only source of illumination in the thick shadows of the temple, and set out into the darkness.  He had planned no destination, but he hoped that walking some of the temple’s more unfamiliar paths would put his mind at ease.

He passed through the wide halls and vaulted archways, through doorways only recently unsealed by himself and the Inquisitor before him.  Up wide stone staircases he ascended, only to come down once more and try a different corridor.  He had already explored most areas of the temple, or at least given them a quick once-over, but now he threw himself into the task with a vengeance.  He thoroughly examined every single nook, cranny, and glint in the darkness by the light of the bowl of flames until his dream felt like a distant memory, one of many ancient recollections tinged with sadness and regret.

By the time he’d passed through a small, ancient wooden door, overgrown with moss, that he hadn’t even taken note of during his initial explorations of the temple, he wasn’t even considering the significance of what he was seeing anymore.  He simply saw a path he had not yet taken and let his curiosity lead him forward, away from the pain in his heart and toward the unknown, or perhaps more accurately the rediscovery of what he once knew.

The elf blindly turned another dark corner.  A hand seized his heart in his chest.

Solas gave a startled grunt and clutched his chest with one hand.  The bowl of flames clattered to the floor and extinguished itself, leaving him wide-eyed and panting in the darkness.  Several seconds slipped by.  The fingers around his heart didn’t relent, nor did they squeeze tighter.

Something stirred in the back of his mind.  Breathlessly, he whispered into the dark, “Mythal?”

The silence rang around him, broken only by the sound of his breathing and the thumping of his own blood in his pointed ears.  At length, the hand in his chest withdrew.

Solas shook himself and cleared his throat.  Briefly he massaged over his heart, the echo of the uncomfortable sensation still fading away.   _Foolish_ , he thought to himself, although he strove for more conviction than he achieved.  Shaking his head, he scooped up the bowl and relit the flame within.

When he looked up, he realized that he had come to a dead end.  A thin stretch of blank stone confronted him, although it made no sense why a corridor so long should end in nothing.  Furrowing his brows, he glanced back the way he had come before turning once more to the empty wall.

To the left, a cast iron brazier waited, dormant.  Solas held the bowl up to it briefly, surprised to find that there was no sconce in which to place a torch, nor, at the touch of his hand, were there remnants of soot or ash.

Curious, he cradled the bowl in one hand and reached beyond with the other, touching the Fade and drawing through a few wisps of Veilfire.  It swirled in the brazier, its ghostly green light growing stronger until it illuminated the whole dead end.

When Solas turned back to the blank wall, everything became clear.

An old rune, one he hadn’t seen in centuries, was sketched across nearly the entirety of the wall.  It was faint, but its blue outline was yet visible through the ages.  He reached for the Fade again, bringing to bear a bolt of spirit energy which he directed at the rune.  A wry smile touched his lips when the wall crumbled before him, turning instantly to the ancient rubble out of which it had been erected.

Solas crossed the threshold of the secret room and raised the bowl of flames high above his head.  Its illumination reached only a handful of feet ahead of him, however; abandoning the bowl altogether, he extinguished the physical flames and elected instead to summon another wisp of Veilfire.  He sent it off in what he assumed was the direction of the center of the ceiling, and there it settled.

After only a few moments, the whole chamber was bathed in eerie, pale green light.

It was far more expansive than Solas had initially guessed, extending, he realized, the length of two of Skyhold’s main halls straight across.  It was less wide, although not by much.  He had to crane his neck to spot the Veilfire swirling overhead, a large mass of incorporeal flames clustered at the center of a domed, gently pointed earthen ceiling.  The walls, now that he inspected them, were made of earth as well.  Roots, rough and gnarled, protruded from the dirt and extended across the cobbled floor, only to dig further into the soil concealed beneath it.  Even more of them dangled from the ceiling in places, their tips reaching down like living stalactites.

He had never seen anything like it in his considerable life.  All of this, however, paled in comparison to what made the chamber its home.

In the very center of the huge earthen vault stood what appeared to be an altar, sculpted entirely from marble more pure and white than any creature, elf, man, or dwarf, could imagine.  When Solas drew tentatively closer, he could see that what he had initially taken for pale veins in the rock were actually shallow, perfectly rendered reliefs.  He knelt beside the base of the tall, wide altar, as close as he dared, and peered at the carvings.

They told a story as they ascended the monolith, one he was all too familiar with.  Depicted at the base of the altar were mountains, carved in such exquisite detail that they may as well have been a monochromatic photograph rather than etchings in rock.  They were the first mountains to have ever existed, the mountains that the Land threw up toward the sky in the beginning of all things.  Above the mountains, the Sun cast light throughout the heavens and across all the Land.

In a separate carving above the beautiful, unthinkably ancient landscape, the Sun lowered itself across the sky.  The mountains of the Land reached up to meet him, and where they touched, the whole world shook.  An elf appeared, tall and strong; he was Elgar’nan, the first elf, beloved of both the Land and the Sun.

As the carvings flowed into one another, Solas followed them ever higher.  He saw the first beasts and birds to walk the earth, and he saw the Sun burn them all to nothing.  Next he saw, in perfect relief, the eternal battle between Elgar’nan and his father in the heavens.  Unconsciously he reached out and gingerly brushed his fingertips over the images; they felt warm to the touch, as though they had been fighting and sweating and burning only moments before and were only just trapped in the stone as he entered.  At the very top of the altar, at eye level, Solas witnessed the Sun’s defeat.

His breath left him as his eyes traveled higher, to the object sitting in repose atop the marble shrine.  It was a simple glass orb about the size of a skull, nestled perfectly in a thin bowl carved from the same slab of stone.  The glass was more perfect, more clear than any glass mortal hands could craft; if it weren’t for the strange, almost metallic, pale rainbow aura that hovered close to its edges, Solas may not have seen it sitting there at all.

He had absolutely no doubt as to what this object truly was.

It was foolish, _beyond_ foolish, to even consider what he was about to do, but every fiber of his being, every part of him that was truly Elvhen, called out to that sacred orb.  With shaking fingers, Solas raised his hands above his head.  

Millimeter by painful millimeter, they closed on the orb.  As they entered the radiance of its aura, he felt the thing’s warmth against his skin.  It pulsed, radiated, fluctuated as though it were alive.  Suddenly Solas felt as though he were _connected_ to it; its aura seemed to shift with each subtle twitch of his fingers.  It grew brighter, although just barely, in the presence of a living, breathing creature.

His heart threatening to beat straight out of his chest, Solas laid his hands on the orb in which, an eternity ago, Elgar’nan had caged the Sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Elven Translation:** "Excuse me, my love."


	3. Excavation

“Be on your guard.  If he’s here, he’ll have set wards,” the Inquisitor cautioned as she and her friends entered the grove just ahead of the temple entrance.

The corner of Varric’s lips tilted downward uncomfortably as he shifted Bianca from his shoulder to his hands.  “You really think Chuckles could be a threat?” he asked doubtfully.

Velatha was quiet for a moment, letting a heavy, telling silence settle among the group.  At length, she said, “I presumed to know Solas’s mind once.  It isn’t a mistake I intend to repeat.”

Iron Bull grunted softly beside her, whether in agreement or disapproval she couldn’t say.

The four of them proceeded cautiously as they moved through the grove, pausing briefly every so often when Velatha sensed magic nearby.  She had a difficult time discerning its origin; the temple was a magical place in and of itself, and she was sure that much of what she felt was lingering energy from the time when it was inhabited.  Still, there were traces of something more recent, and something still older, wafting like a faint scent through the air.

It wasn’t until they reached the arches leading into the overgrown temple entrance that she threw an arm out wide and said, “Stop.”

Everyone halted.  Tentatively, she extended a hand out in front of her.

As her fingertips passed through the vaulted archway, the air shimmered brightly around them before she was struck by a blinding white bolt of lightening, her body cast backward like a limp ragdoll.

In unison, Varric shouted, “Velatha!”

Iron Bull thundered, “Boss!”

Cole cried out in fear.

After a handful of seconds of blissful unawareness, the Inquisitor began to blink herself into consciousness.  She was vaguely aware of a heavy hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently, and Varric’s voice from somewhere very far away urging, “C’mon, wake up...If we came all this way for you to die already, I swear on Andraste’s flaming tits, I’ll─”

She groaned, loudly, drowning out the rest of the dwarf’s bloody promise.  Clutching her injured hand to her chest, Velatha weakly rolled over onto her face and mumbled into the dirt, “That...did not feel good.”

Iron Bull’s laughter boomed throughout the grove, almost, but not quite, overshadowing Varric’s profound sigh.  “You had to touch it, didn’t you?” the dwarf asked, although there was little hint of a question in his words.

“Shut up,” Velatha retorted lamely, beginning to use her elbows to push herself into a sitting position.  “I didn’t know it was going to electrocute me, did I?  Besides, isn’t it better me than you?”

“I’m not the leader of the free world,” Varric pointed out, sidestepping to allow Cole access to the Inquisitor.

The boy dropped down to his knees beside her and helped her sit up, his wide brimmed hat obscuring his features and brushing Velatha's cheek.  “You're hurt," he pointed out, reaching slowly for her hand.

“It's not that bad, really," she tried to say, but her words carried little weight. The hand had been blackened by the bolt, and a ragged strip of skin stretching from her knuckle almost to her wrist had been singed off.

“Let me help," the boy insisted anyway, giving no indication that he had heard her at all. Her hand resting flat along his inner arm, he reached behind his back and pulled out his canteen. The Inquisitor's mouth twisted unpleasantly when the water splashed over her injury, but she remained quiet as Cole removed the soot-like magical residue from her skin. Once the area was clean, he dug into a satchel fixed to his belt and withdrew a small glass bottle the color of dark seaweed. He uncapped it and gently sprinkled a few greenish brown drops of liquid over the wound before dabbing it around with his finger, a process twice as uncomfortable as the rinsing had been.

It wasn't until he had finished tying a clean strip of bandage around her hand that she allowed herself a sharp sigh of relief. “Thanks, Cole," she said, but he again appeared not to have heard her. Human or no, he would still never acknowledge his kindness after the fact.

“Well, then.  If you’re done sittin’ around, how about you knock that barrier out of the way for us?” Bull suggested, leaning down and offering the Inquisitor a massive hand.  She took it, and he lifted her clear of the ground before setting her easily down on her feet.

“Perhaps we should just toss you into it.  I’m sure it wouldn’t stand a chance,” she retorted smoothly as she turned back to the stone arches.  Bull let out a low chuckle, and a somewhat sly grin slipped over Varric’s features; the Inquisitor had a tongue that was sharp at both ends, and he was glad to see that she was finally putting it to use once again.

This time, wiser for her foolish initial investigation, Velatha came to a halt some five feet away from the barrier.  She spun her staff, rightfully and affectionately nicknamed Stormbringer, around her uninjured hand.  It had been too long since it had seen any real use, in her opinion; she was glad they hadn’t needed to do much fighting on the journey to the wilds, aside from bandits and the occasional angry animal, but it felt good to be using real magic again.  Now that the fight against Corypheus was over and nearly all of her time was spent cloistered away in Skyhold, there hadn’t been much need for her talents.

Still, she had to wonder why Solas had elected to erect a barrier of electrical energy rather than something else.  He was extraordinarily accomplished with spirit magic and spells that drew from deeper areas of the Fade; he could have cast something much stronger than what hovered in the air before her.  With a few moments’ concentration, she sent a barrage of swirling, dark energy  into the heart of the barrier, causing it to explode in a gust of wind and a light, electrical crackle.

Without looking back, the Inquisitor announced, “It’s gone.  Let’s see if our deserter is still here.”

Less than a quarter of an hour passed before the quartet found themselves in the antechamber of the temple, standing around the remnants of what was clearly Solas’s home for the duration of his stay.  “I think the safe answer is no,” Varric said, slipping Bianca back over his shoulder.

“Well, he hasn’t been gone long,” Iron Bull pointed out.  He squatted down next to a small patch of rubbish, haphazardly left swept around the floor, and ran his fingers over everything he could.  “Spilled ink, dry...little ash...scraps of paper….What’s this, sausage casing?” he muttered, picking up a small piece of thin, sticky membrane between thumb and forefinger.  He lifted it to his nose and gave it a sniff.  Shrugging, he said, “Still good.”

“Then he can’t be more than a day or two ahead of us,” Varric reasoned hopefully, his eyes shifting up to the Inquisitor.

“In which direction?” she queried, far less optimism in her own voice.

“There has to be something here to give us an idea.”

“No, there hasn’t...but it looks like he left in a hurry.  If we’re lucky, maybe he left something behind,” Velatha answered.  She wasn’t so convinced that they would find anything, but she would be damned if she didn’t look, thoroughly.

The four of them investigated the remains of Solas’s makeshift camp, sifting through everything as best they could without disturbing too much of it; both Velatha and Bull were skilled trackers, and the latter insisted that they preserve what they could so that, when they were finished checking the place out, they could attempt to trace Solas’s steps during and after his stay in the temple.  Afterward, a quick investigation of the magical artifacts left out yielded little results; Velatha had no clue what any of them were, but she could plainly tell that none were functional anymore.  Following that, the only evidence the group found of the missing elf’s movements were traces of charcoal around the edges of inscriptions, likely the result of tracing engravings, and a very tamped down patch of earth in front of the broken Eluvian.

It wasn’t until Bull nearly bypassed a small door, overgrown with moss, hidden off of one of the side corridors that the adventurers discovered anything substantial.

The qunari, seeing something amiss out of the corner of his eye, took a step backward and turned to face the odd door.  He squinted at it, noting how the moss had been torn away from the handle and brushed aside.  “Hey, guys,” he called, letting his voice echo through the temple, “think I got something!”

A few minutes passed before the Inquisitor, Varric, and Cole found their way to his side.  “Maybe next time don’t shout,” Velatha said, her tone a little exasperated but not wholly unamused.  “We followed your echo halfway out of the temple before we─this is an odd door…”

Iron Bull turned his eye down onto her.  His expression rather clearly stated, “Yeah.  Exactly.”  Verbally, he said, “Let’s see what’s behind it.”

He pushed the door open, and it swung inward to impenetrable darkness.

Velatha’s dark brows furrowed.  She gave her staff a quick shake, and little bolts of electricity began to crackle and shoot around the jagged crystal suspended at its head.  The bluish white light bounced irregularly off the passage walls, casting deep shadows ahead and between the stones.

“Could just light a torch,” Bull pointed out.

The Inquisitor smiled to herself and began to lead the party down the hidden corridor.

It was a long walk, longer than any of them had expected.  The passage turned several times in different directions, but no doors ever appeared on either side of it.  Likewise, it didn’t angle up at all, but ran downward at a steady, nearly imperceptible gradient.  The only indication that they were, indeed, descending into the bowels of the earth came when Cole gave a pronounced shiver and rubbed at the arms of his leather coat.  “We’re very far down,” he said.  His tone was as innocent as ever, but the words sounded ominous in the dark.

“There’s magic up ahead.  I can feel it,” Velatha relayed quietly, undeterred by the chill that had crept into the air.  She walked a little faster, her curiosity all the more intent after Cole’s observation.

After several more minutes passed, the eerie silence broken only by the sound of footsteps on the ancient stone, the party turned a corner and was confronted with a gaping black hole.

“What the hell?  Is this an entrance to the Deep Roads?” Varric speculated as he stood beside the Inquisitor.  He leaned forward, attempting to peer into the darkness, but made no move to get any closer to the opening in the wall.

“No, not an entrance.  Not a start, an end,” Cole said softly from the back of the group.

“So you feel it, too?” Velatha asked without looking back.  She didn’t know what she felt, but she felt _something_.  Some presence still lingered in the place beyond the hole in the wall, like the delicate strains of a long forgotten song, haunting the charred bones of ancient Chasind battlefields.

“We should be careful,” Varric suggested, his voice low and suspicious.

The Inquisitor held her lit staff before her and crossed into the darkness, one hand resting gently on the broken stone framing the entrance to whatever chamber they had stumbled across.  She moved to the left, the feel of the solid wall beneath her fingers keeping her grounded in the impenetrable blackness.

Suddenly her skin made contact with something rough and yielding, and then, not a moment later, something hard...and warm.

She swung the staff down, her eyes snapping onto whatever thing had entered her grasp.  With a tiny gasp, she realized that she was holding onto a root as thick as her forearm.  “What is this place?” she murmured, turning her eyes out to the darkness once again.

“Hey, Boss,” Iron Bull called from a few feet behind her.  “How about a little more light?”

Velatha obliged, shifting her staff into her other hand and reaching for a few wisps of Veilfire, the easiest unnatural way to light a room.  She shifted the iridescent ball of green flame to the head of her staff, letting it grow brighter until it cast a much wider circle of illumination than her little lightning bolts ever could.

“What’s that?” Varric asked immediately, his voice wary as he began to advance toward the faraway center of the chamber.  The rest of the party followed on his heels.  Once they were close enough to the white altar to discern the carvings decorating every inch of its perfect, polished surface, he murmured, “By the ancestors...I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“That’s because this isn’t dwarven,” Velatha said quietly, reverently.  She took a couple more shuffling steps forward, her eyes devouring the intricate reliefs displayed on the altar.

“So...you know what this is, then?” Iron Bull prompted.  The wonder and significance of this experience was utterly lost on him.

The Inquisitor shook her head, although another couple of moments passed before it occurred to her to speak.  A bit absently, she replied, “No, not at all...but these I understand.”  She brushed the cold carvings with her fingertips.

Varric waited for some explanation, but when none was forthcoming, he asked, “Care to enlighten us, Inquisitor?”

“All Dalish know the tale,” Velatha replied softly, continuing to drink in the reliefs.  “In the very beginning, there was the Land and the Sun.  The Sun became curious about the Land and bowed his head close to her, and Elgar’nan, the All-Father and god of vengeance, was born in the place where they touched.”

Iron Bull chuckled lewdly, but Velatha ignored him and pressed on, her soft tone growing stronger.

“The Land created beasts and birds for Elgar’nan, and he loved them so much that the Sun grew jealous.  He shone so brightly on the Land that he burned them all to ash.  Elgar’nan took vengeance on the Sun and plucked him from the sky.  He buried him deep within the earth, and only released him when Mythal persuaded Elgar’nan to forgive the injustice.  This shrine tells the story.”

The Bull gave an unimpressed grunt.  A brief silence fell over the companions.

At length, Varric said, “Last I checked, we weren’t in the Temple of Elgar’nan.  What’s this doing down here?”

Velatha shook her head.  “I don’t know,” she answered sadly.

“I think a better question might be, what did Solas want down here?” Iron Bull pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest.  There was a lot of standing around and contemplating but not nearly enough getting shit done for his taste.

A brief vision of the elf sitting crosslegged before the altar and scribbling half illegible notes flashed through the Inquisitor’s mind.  She didn’t know what else he might have discovered when he stumbled upon the ancient earthen chamber and she didn’t know what made him flee the temple, but she had a feeling that those things were connected.  After all, disturbing a place like this, a place so ancient and holy, couldn’t be without consequence.

Velatha turned her back on the altar, her resolve beginning to burn in her pale eyes.  Her voice edged with the indomitable focus Solas so admired, she remarked, “Let’s go ask him, shall we?”


	4. Prices Paid

Solas dropped to one knee, his eyes sweeping over the fragments of dark glass shattered around him.  He didn’t know what else he should have expected to find; after all, ten years had passed since this Eluvian’s discovery, and its emergence wasn’t exactly situated among what one would call favorable circumstances.  It would have been a miracle to find it intact, and it probably would have required yet another to access it even with his newly regained, and newly found, powers.

His brows furrowed and, using the edge of the fraying greyish robe belted over his tunic, he brushed the shards across the floor.  Several large pieces were clearly missing, causing the elf to give a profound frown.  Even if he had the time or the resources to restore it, it would be impossible now.  All that was left for him to do was to leave the ruin and try to locate another Eluvian.  After that, he simply had to hope that the orb he carried could unlock it.

It was right about now that he began to realize exactly how foolish it had been for him to leave Skyhold.

That place, the Inquisition, had access to nearly all of Thedas.  They would be able to help him locate the resources he needed, and they would be able to aid him in the extraordinary undertaking he had insisted he accomplish on his own.  He could have come to these strange ruins with an entire scouting party; at least he wouldn’t have had to face down the abhorrent giant spiders alone.

Then again, he had but to turn around and he would probably smack straight into the Inquisitor.  She had been hot on his trail for the past two weeks, chasing him out of the Temple of Mythal, across the Frostbacks, and deep into the heart of the Brecilian Forest.  He should have known that she would come after him eventually.  She was never the type to leave loose ends untied, but he had hoped that her responsibilities would have been great enough to prevent her from running after him.

In truth, it was a hope he harbored as much for the sake of his cause as for himself.  She could never know who he was; the People, in their desperation to recreate their heritage, had tarnished his image beyond salvation.  If he couldn’t reveal his true identity to her, then he certainly couldn’t confide in her his goals; if he couldn’t do that, being with her would only hold him back from what he felt he needed to do.  Besides...he was fairly confident that if he faced her now, he may not have the strength to turn away from her again.

He had put his own selfish desires above the good of the People once.  It was a mistake he would never make again, no matter the cost.

Rising to his feet, Solas cast one last, long look at the shattered shards of the Eluvian.  It had been a long shot coming here, but still he had to work to swallow his disappointment as he turned back to the crumbling, human ruins around him.  It burned him a little to see artifacts of his people appropriated by humans, likely before the elves had even shed their bonds of slavery long ago.  This place was yet another reminder of all the wrongs he had to right.

Winding his way through the twisting, half-destroyed halls, he searched them until he found an exit other than the path through which he entered; he didn’t know how much ground the Inquisitor gained while he’d been exploring, and he didn’t want to risk that she lost his trail in the forest.  Luckily for him, a portion of the ceiling of one of the halls had caved in, and he was able to clamor up the rubble and haul himself back into the sunlight with little difficulty.

“Now...where to go from here?” he mused wearily as his silver eyes scanned the spaces between the trees.

* * *

“Damn,” Velatha cursed quietly as she crouched low, examining the dirt.

“Problem, Boss?” Iron Bull asked.  He moved to stand behind her, his eyes trained on the patch of earth under scrutiny.  She didn’t need to answer before he added, “Ah, shit.”

A beat passed before Varric took the bait.  “Don’t leave us in suspense,” he prompted, a wary edge cutting his tone.

“The trail’s gone,” the Inquisitor admitted reluctantly.

“What, just like that?  He vanished?” the dwarf pushed.

“Well, no.  We haven’t been following his footsteps, he didn’t just fly off,” Velatha returned with a sarcastic wave of her hand.

“Something else came through here recently,” Bull supplied.  “Something big.  Ground’s turned over the whole area.”

“Which makes it impossible to tell which direction he went,” the Inquisitor added.  Lightly she touched her fingertips to a hoofprint, the crescent shape indented sharply but not deeply.  “This is a halla print,” she observed before she flung her eyes further forward.  “And that looks like an aravel furrow.  I think there might be a clan nearby.”

“Would he go to them?” Varric asked as the Inquisitor rose to her feet once again.

She shook her head.  “No, he doesn’t like the Dalish.  Finds them proud and ignorant,” she answered dispassionately.  Her conversations with Solas regarding her people weren’t fond memories; less fond were those wherein she discovered he was right.

“Still,” she went on after a moment, a thought occurring to her, “we might seek them out.  They probably have hunters all over the area.  We can ask if they’ve seen any elves passing through.”

The Inquisitor kept her eyes mostly to the ground, following the very clear tracks in the soft dirt.  By the freshness of the trail, she guessed that the clan couldn’t have been settled for more than a few days.  Of course, that meant that they may not have as good a read of the lay of the land as she hoped, unless they tended to stick close to the forest or had passed through before.  Even then, every clan was different in terms of how broad a watch they kept around their camps.  Clan Lavellan, before the Venatori poisoned the Duke of Wycome against them, had been more or less comfortable with outsiders, if a bit suspicious.  Other clans, ones that kept to the wilder regions like this place, could be much more unpredictable.

If they _had_ seen Solas, however, the diversion, and the risk, was worth it.

As Velatha led her friends through the tall, moss covered trees, she couldn’t help but hope that the Dalish would be able to lead them in the right direction.  She was getting tired of staying one step behind Solas, of chasing him across Ferelden and not being able to catch up.  What was more, she was almost certain that he knew they were following him; each of the little camps they happened upon had been deconstructed in a hurry, the ground kicked over and the remnants of meals and small fires left behind.

It might be irrational, but the longer this went on, the more she continued to get the impression that Solas wasn’t just running, he was running from _her_.

“Hold, shem!” called a low voice from the trees, startling Velatha out of her reverie.

The troubled expression that hovered at the corners of her lips and the edges of her eyes gave way to clear alarm.  Her hand shot behind her back to make a grab for her staff.

“Draw, and we’ll shoot!” warned a second voice.

A pair of Dalish hunters dropped from the branches onto the trail ahead of the small party.  Each of them had bows trained on the adventurers; the first to speak had a bead on Velatha while the second wavered between the other three, distrust evident in his pointed features.

“Alright!” the Inquisitor called back.  Slowly, she displayed her palms out in front of her in a gesture of surrender.  “We don’t mean you any harm.  We only wanted to speak with your Keeper.”

“What would more shemlen want with our Keeper?” asked the second, a touch of rudeness in his voice.

Velatha’s brows slammed down and her mouth twisted in offense, and then she remembered her Vallaslin.  They couldn’t see what she was.  Her stomach turned, but she did her best to keep her discomfort out of her features.  Drawing herself up to her full height, she pushed a lock of red hair behind her pointed ear and answered, “I am Velatha Lavellan, granddaughter of Keeper Istimaethoriel Lavellan and leader of the Inquisition.  I desire the Keeper’s guidance in a simple matter concerning a member of the Inquisition.  Nothing more.”

The arrow of the first elf’s bow dipped a little lower, and he seemed to relent slightly.  “Inquisition, you said?” he asked, his voice filled with curiosity and suspicion in equal measure.

“That’s right,” Velatha answered.  She tried to shove as much authority into her tone as she could; she still wasn’t used to the weight her title could carry.

“Do you believe her?” the second elf asked; his aim remained true, his expression unmoved.

“They say the Inquisitor’s Dalish,” the first elf shrugged.  “They say she looks out for us.”

“Who says that?”

“The Keeper and all the Hahren.  She could be telling the truth.”

“Or she could be lying.”

“I think we should take them to the Keeper,” the first elf said, shifting his gaze back to the party.  The second elf made a disagreeable sort of growling noise but said nothing else.  The first added, “Follow me, and keep away your weapons.  Our eyes are on you.”  He turned, arrow still nocked although it was directed at the ground, and began to lead the way along the trail.  The second elf waited until the party had passed, then he took up a position behind them.

“They’re a friendly bunch, aren’t they?” Varric muttered at Velatha’s shoulder.

She twitched her eyebrows upward in brief, noncommittal agreement.  This certainly wasn’t the greeting she had expected, no, but she realized that perhaps she should have expected it.  The Dalish living in the Exalted Plains had welcomed her because she was clearly Dalish; these elves hadn’t even been able to tell her from a human.  If she still had her Vallaslin, ancient slave markings or not, they would have recognized her as one of the People immediately.

Absently, Velatha brushed her fingertips along her chin, tracing the place where a dark green crescent line used to curve below her lip.

“You alright, Inquisitor?”

Velatha started slightly.  Her eyes, which had wandered down to the ground, snapped onto Varric.  “I’m fine,” she told him, pulling up the corner of her mouth in what she hoped was a reassuring half-smile.

He raised his eyebrows at her but didn’t press the issue further.  They both knew he didn’t believe her; he made that same face every time she said she was fine, and it was getting to the point where she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to keep bottling it all in or just ask him if he really wanted to go down that road with her.

The friends spent the rest of the relatively short journey in silence due mostly to the guard that surrounded them.  The elves made good on their promise, however, and before long, Velatha’s eyes alighted on a statue of Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf.  Just beyond it stood a cluster of aravels and, beyond those, the tents that marked the Dalish camp.

Once the group had passed the statue, the leading elf turned and instructed them, “Wait here.”

As soon as he left, Cole shuffled forward in between Varric and Iron Bull and quietly muttered, “He thought they could be friends.  He thought they could change things, but now he’s been poisoned.  Far away from home, and he can never go back now.  He doesn’t remember who he is.”

Bull grunted uneasily.

The kid’s words put Velatha a bit on edge, but she refrained from questioning him for the time being and instead took the opportunity to look around. Fire pits dotted the wide area in front of her, some on open ground, some brought as close beneath the shade of the trees as possible.  Benches were arranged in circles and many were occupied; many other elves also chose to lounge cross-legged in the grass.  Hunters shot makeshift targets at one end of the camp, and the clan’s craftswoman worked with her apprentice over an open fire in an attempt to teach him how to shape ironbark into a proper breastplate.  Dark reddish brown tents and covered aravels formed a ring around the large camp.

Everything looked so utterly familiar that, for the first time since the explosion at the Conclave, the Inquisitor realized just how much she missed her own clan.

However, it seemed she still wasn’t meant to have enough downtime to indulge in homesickness.  The elf who’d led them to the camp returned with his Keeper in tow, a middle aged woman with a lightness about her that most older Keepers lacked.  She had kind eyes, if a bit lined, and greeted her odd assortment of guests with a smile.

“Andaran atish’an, travellers,” she greeted them.  “Maeron tells me that you are the Inquisitor.  Is this true?”

“It is, Keeper,” Velatha answered, bowing her head briefly in respect to the other woman.

The Keeper smiled at this.  “It is good to see one of the People elevated to such an important position.  Perhaps we may see change while we yet live.  But, I must confess, I did not recognize you, da’len,” she said.

The knot in Velatha’s stomach reformed but she ignored it.  With no desire to explain or admit to the circumstances surrounding her bare face, she simply said, “All things come with a price, Keeper.”

“They do,” she replied, sympathy swimming in her clear blue eyes before they turned to the rest of the people brought before her.  “I think I might have an introduction, Inquisitor,” she added.

Velatha nodded before gesturing to everyone in turn.  “I am Velatha Lavellan, of clan Lavellan to the north.  Varric Tethras, of Kirkwall.  The Iron Bull, commander of the Bull’s Chargers, special forces of the Inquisition.  And this is Cole, a good friend.”

“Well met.  You may call me Lanaya, or Keeper, as you please.”  

The Keeper nodded to her hunters, at which point they began to move off into the camp, not without a few backward glances at the company.  She seemed not to notice, though, and gestured with a smile toward the camp herself.  The party fell into step behind her, the Inquisitor to her right.

“So, da’len,” the Keeper continued as they walked, “you wished to speak with me?  Why not with the Keeper of your own clan?”

“My clan is camped in the Free Marches,” Velatha explained, “and this matter is...local.  Could you tell me, Keeper, if your hunters have seen any other elves travelling through the area?”

The Keeper shook her head.  “I am afraid they haven’t.  Why do you ask?”

Velatha bit the inside of her cheek briefly, searching for a way to phrase, _I’m looking for an ex-lover who suspiciously haunts ancient elven ruins_ , delicately.  After a moment, she said, “One of our friends ran off with something that belongs to me.  I would like to retrieve it, that is all.”

The Keeper nodded.  “I see.  I can tell the hunters to be vigilant when they go out into the forest, but I am afraid I can offer nothing else,” she said, coming to a halt outside the entrance to what Velatha assumed was her tent.  “You are, of course, welcome to rest with us, if you choose.  The forest is a dangerous place.  I do not doubt you have had a difficult journey.”

“Thank you, Keeper, but I think we will have to move─”

“Varric?  Varric, is that really you?”

The Inquisitor paused at the sound of such an excited voice calling out to her companion, her features screwing up in stark surprise as she turned to see who had spoken.

Her expression was nothing compared to the abject shock scrawled across the dwarf’s face.  “Blondie?” he asked, incredulous.

The man striding purposefully toward the group absolutely beamed in response to the recognition, although it did little to improve his countenance.  His skin was pale, almost grey around his mouth and along his neck.  He was unshaven, blonde stubble that was just a bit too long covering his cheeks and chin.  His hair, which must have been the source of his nickname, was lank and shaggy where it brushed his shoulders below his half-ponytail.

Cole took a deliberate step behind Iron Bull at the sight of him and, when Bull began to move, persistently remained in his shadow.

Whatever the man’s physical condition, however, it seemed not to affect his exuberance.  “None other!  Knew you’d recognize me!” he said as he came to stop in front of Varric, reaching out to clasp both hands over his shoulders.  “What are you doing here?”

“You mean, what are _you_ doing here?  Of all the farflung places in the world, hiding out with a clan of Dalish elves in the Brecilian Forest is the last one I’d expect you to pick,” Varric answered.  His demeanor wasn’t frosty, but it was notably less enthusiastic than his friend’s.

The man seemed to pick up on it quickly.  He dropped his hands to his sides and straightened up.  “Then if I was looking to hide, I think I did a pretty good job,” he shrugged.  “I can tell you the story later, if you like.  For now, I see you’re still keeping odd company.  Don’t you think you ought to introduce me to your friends?”

Varric looked like he was holding in a sigh, but he dutifully gestured to each of his fellows as he succinctly explained, “That’s Cole behind Iron Bull, and this is Inquisitor Lavellan.”

“Inquisitor?” the man repeated with surprise.  He stepped forward and extended a hand.  “That’s almost as big a surprise as seeing Varric.”

Velatha, who had zero precedent for this, shook the stranger’s hand and conjured up a smile.  “Velatha.  Any friend of Varric’s,” she told him politely before adding, “And...you are?”

“Excuse my manners, haven’t needed them in quite a while,” he laughed.  It was evident that he had been away from familiar faces for a long time, he was so happy to be making acquaintances.  “I’m Anders.  Varric and I go a long way back.”

Velatha balked at the man’s name before she felt her heart sink.  “Wait─you’re _the_ Anders?  The one who destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry?”

“The one and only,” he answered, although he seemed to deflate somewhat at the mention of the attack.  Still, a note of humor remained in his voice as he added, “Why, do you plan on handing me over to the Templars?  Are they still evil─well, _more_ evil?  News is a bit unreliable in the wilderness.”

“The Inquisition is hunting down the last of the Red Templars.  After that, I have a friend who’s interested in rebuilding the order,” Velatha told him, holding her voice even.  She had no idea if that information was still accurate as she’d been away for a while without a status report of any kind, but that wasn’t what currently occupied her mind.

“I’ll take that as a no, for now,” Anders said with a lopsided smile.  “Anyway, speaking of news, shall we sit?  I haven’t heard anything since Corypheus went down, and nothing consistent since he reappeared in the first place.  I didn’t even think that was possible.  I specifically remember Anirah stopping and insisting we loot the body.”

Anders led them away to a couple of empty benches as he babbled.  He claimed one as his own, and once everyone else made themselves comfortable (Cole continued to stand just behind Iron Bull and eyed Anders warily every few moments), he said to Varric, “Okay, start at the beginning.  Wait, don’t.  Start with Anirah.  I just know she found a way to put herself right in the middle of it all after I left.”

The mood surrounding the small group stepped off an atmospheric cliff and plummeted into the abyss.  Velatha felt the corners of her mouth fall as though they were attached to lead weights, and she felt Varric shift uncomfortably beside her.  He looked as though he had been dreading this moment for a long time, as though somehow he knew this responsibility would always come down on him.

Anders grew impatient as the dwarf worked up the fortitude to speak.  He prodded, “Varric, what’s wrong?”

When no answer was forthcoming, an edge of panic crept into his voice.  “Did something happen?” he insisted, his hands curling into fists on his knees.

Varric looked up at the man he had once called his friend, a pitiful shadow of his former self.  Profound grief, still fresh after all these months, was written across the dwarf’s face, but Anders was resolutely denying this with whatever strength he had.  The two stared at each other, their eyes locked, each willing the other to believe their version of the truth until, after a long moment, Varric broke.

He turned his eyes to the ground.  “I guess you didn’t get my letter...I’m sorry, Blondie,” he said quietly, gruffly.  “Hawke’s gone.”

One last flame of hope, desperate and bright, flickered behind Anders’ eyes, and then it was snuffed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I'd like to offer a quick thanks to those who have taken the time to read or subscribe to this story - I'm glad you've liked it enough to stick with it! That said, I try not to make a habit of asking for reviews, but this chapter gave me a lot of trouble (both times I rewrote it). I know everything may seem a bit out of left field, but if any kind soul would like to offer some feedback about plot/characterization/pacing/questions/anything really, I would love to hear whether people are enjoying the progression of events and what they'd like to see me improve upon as we continue. Thanks, everyone!


	5. Grievances

His head ached.  His heart ached.  His stomach ached.

It was getting very hard to breathe.

Anders stood with his back to the group of travelers, one hand braced against a tree to keep him upright, not that it was working.  He slumped heavily against the trunk, his other hand wrapped over his eyes, fingertips digging into his temples.

If he could just shut it all out, maybe it wouldn’t be true.

He and Hawke had been together for so long that he could no longer imagine what life would be like without her. Her support was always what kept him going.  It gave him the strength to carry on after he'd destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry; she hadn't approved of what he'd done, but she understood his motivation when everyone else, even himself, would see him condemned. Always she had far more faith in him than he had in himself, and that faith was often the way he continued to convince himself that he was still _Anders_.

Without her, without the option to go and find her again, so many hard truths in his life crumbled beneath him.

Something churned below his skin, like a wave of fire crashing over a desolate shore.  A feeling rose up, a terrible, powerful feeling that didn’t eliminate the grief but managed to beat it back, to leash it so that it was no longer the only thing taking possession of him.  With some effort, he straightened up and turned back to the group.

“Explain it again,” he told Varric, his voice balancing on a hard edge.

The dwarf looked up at him, a clear plea in his brown eyes.  “Come on, Blondie.  I’ve told you twice already.  Hearing it again won’t help,” he answered wearily.

Anders was unmoved.  “Explain it again,” he repeated.

Varric watched him for several long moments.  Eventually, he simply sighed and shook his head.

The fiery wave rose up inside Anders again, and he made to turn and walk away before a soft voice stopped him.

“We were in the Fade,” the Inquisitor began gently, “trying to find a way back through the rift.  We managed to defeat the fear demon who controlled the area, but as we were leaving, this...giant... _horrible_ thing, I’m not even sure what it was, came back...It must have been bound to the demon somehow.  It was blocking our way to the rift and we need...we needed someone to cover our escape.  Hawke insisted...she said that the Wardens needed Alistair to rebuild...she said…”  The Inquisitor paused and gave a very noticeable swallow.  Her eyes remained on the ground.  At length, she finished, “She said, ‘I’m so sorry, Anders.’”

The Inquisitor’s words pierced Anders as brutally as any arrow could, but the burning inside his soul wouldn’t abate.  “You were in the Fade.  Physically in the Fade,” he stated.

He wasn’t looking at anyone or searching for reassurance, but the Inquisitor still answered, “That’s right.”

“And...and you _saw_ her die,” he made himself say.

Everyone was silent.

Anders looked up, his gaze alighting on each of the uncomfortable faces staring back at him.  “Well?  You saw her die, didn’t you?” he demanded harshly.  The boy, Cole, flinched at the violence in his voice, but Anders didn’t give two shits who he was unnerving with his interrogation.

At length, the Inquisitor gave a hesitant shake of her head.  “We were running, we couldn’t─”

“So you didn’t see her body?”

“No, we─”

“You left her for dead in the Fade, and you _didn’t even make sure she was dead?_ ” Anders growled loudly, the words ripping themselves from his throat.  Black cracks appeared over his skin, jagged flashes of dark energy lasting only a fraction of a second before they disappeared.  Several elves threw concerned, distrustful looks his way, but he was blind to them.

“Hey!” the qunari put in, uncrossing his arms for the first time since he sat down.  “Watch it, mage.  We did what we could.  It was _her_ choice, not ours, and we honored her sacrifice.”

“What sacrifice?!” Anders shot back.  “For all you know, she could have survived and you all just sealed her away with an ass load of demons!”

“Stop it, Anders,” Varric interjected.  He didn’t speak loudly, but his voice held a finality that granted him everyone’s attention.  “Hawke saved us.  Nobody wishes she was still alive more than I do, but she’s gone.  Even she couldn’t last this long out there alone.”

“And who’s fault is that?” the mage spat.  He stalked away, unable to stand before the people who had left the love of his life trapped inside the Fade, alone.  The burn inside his soul intensified and spread throughout his body, eating away at everything he thought, everything he felt, except for the grief.  That was so numbingly cold and so unimaginably powerful that its presence continued to make itself known.

During the couple of weeks Anders had travelled with the Dalish, he’d carved out a small place for himself and for his things, mostly so he could stay out of the elves’ way.  It was as he was walking back to this place that an idea suddenly possessed him so thoroughly that it never even occurred to him to think it out for another second.  His pace quickened and purpose bled into his movements as he exchanged his clothes for his old mage armor, the black renegade’s coat complete with simir feather pauldrons.  What few other things he’d kept since he went on the run were thrown into a pack and slung over his shoulder along with his staff, a black rod carved into the shape of three intertwining dragons.

When he emerged into the camp proper once again, he almost looked a like his old self, save for the dark gleam in his eye.

* * *

“We shouldn’t be here.  It’s not right, it isn’t right,” Cole insisted, his frantic voice squeaking slightly in its urgency.

The Inquisitor twisted around to look at him, startled by the barely restrained fear she could see in his pale features.  “Calm down, Cole,” she said as gently as she could.  “What isn’t right?”

Cole shook his head, huge movements to and fro that shook the brim of his hat in all directions.  “He’s a demon.  He’ll hurt us,” he said, each word carrying a pronounced tremor.

“Who’s a demon?  What are you on about?” Velatha questioned, although a sigh from her shoulder drew her attention away.  “Varric?” she asked, one red brow inching upward.

The dwarf lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his wide nose.  “Blondie, what the hell happened to you?” he muttered to himself.  He took a moment to collect himself before he straightened up, and when he began to speak, his voice was wearier than Velatha had ever heard it sound before.

“Back in Kirkwall, right before Anders blew up the Chantry, he was...I guess you could say, losing control.  By the end of it we were seeing more of Justice than we were of him.  It was...bad.  When the spirit took over, there were times when he was so full of rage he almost killed innocent people.  And...then he did.”

“But,” Velatha interjected, “I thought Justice was a benevolent spirit?”

“Wait, wait─who the hell is Justice?” Iron Bull demanded.  His eyebrow was lowered, along with the corners of his mouth; he hadn’t followed a word of anything thus far.

Varric let loose another sigh.  “Justice is a spirit from the Fade.  Blondie, in all his stupidity, let it possess him so the two of them could right the wrongs mages suffered at the hands of the Templars.  He meant well, but there were...side effects.”

“So he’s an abomination,” the qunari pushed.  His fingers twitched eagerly.

“I really don’t know anymore,” Varric admitted, a little reluctantly.

Velatha’s brow furrowed, the gears in her mind turning over everything she’d heard.  “So, does that explain what happened to him a few moments ago?  Were those dark cracks─”

“Pieces of Justice coming through?  I don’t know.  Could be.  He used to do something similar back in Kirkwall, but it didn’t look quite so...sinister,” Varric explained.

“Maybe we should talk to him,” the Inquisitor suggested, an uneasiness settling in the pit of her stomach.  “He seemed perfectly normal at first.  Maybe if we can calm him down, we can see if he’s still in control of himself.”

Iron Bull grunted irritably.  “If he’s not, can we kill him?” he asked harshly.

Velatha gave him a reproachful look but didn’t answer him.  She’d never heard of a case of good spirit possession, let alone good spirit possession gone wrong; Cole, as they’d established, was something entirely different.  If there was a way to reverse whatever Anders had done or help him in some way, then she felt she owed it to Hawke to at least try.  If nothing else, she wanted to soothe some of his anger over what had happened before they left.

When she rose to her feet and turned to look for the mage, however, she was confronted with a sight she hadn’t expected.  Anders was no longer sporting the shabby common clothes he’d worn a few minutes prior; instead, he looked outfitted for battle.  He stood speaking with Keeper Lanaya and, by all appearances, seemed to be saying goodbye.

She and Varric exchanged looks, hers full of surprise, his fraught with concern and exhaustion.

“Don’t do this to me right now, Anders,” he murmured to himself before he strode off toward the mage just breaking off his farewell.

Anders, for his part, failed to notice the four people following after him as he headed toward the edge of the camp.  His steps were quick and purposeful, as though whatever goal he had was already in sight.

After a couple moments of determinedly following after him, Varric made an exasperated noise and called sharply, “Hold it, Blondie.”

“Varric, don’t,” was the hard reply.  Anders kept walking.

Varric let out another frustrated noise before he put on a brief burst of speed, closing the distance between himself and his quarry.  He reached out, but just before his hand could grasp Anders’ elbow, those black cracks flashed across the visible portions of the other man’s skin and he whirled around.  “I said, don’t,” he cautioned darkly.

“Then tell me what’s gotten into you!  What the hell was that?  What happened to you after we left Kirkwall?” the dwarf demanded, undaunted.

Anders scoffed.  “Is that real concern or are you gathering material for a sequel?”

“Stop being an ass and talk to me.”

“I don’t seem to recall you being very eager to talk the last time we were together.  Actually, I remember a lot of avoiding eye contact and running off at the first chance.”

“Are we leaving out the part where you murdered dozens of innocent people and started a blighted war, one that all your friends had to clean up for you?”

Red anger flashed in Anders’ eyes.  “I pay for what I’ve done every single day,” he snarled back.  “I will not let Hawke collect a punishment that’s rightfully mine.”

“Hawke is dead, Anders,” Varric said with a conviction that shook each of his companions.  “Even if she wasn’t, you can’t get to her.  Nobody can physically enter the Fade whenever they want.  She’s gone.  Wishing won’t change it.”

A lead blanket of silence fell over the group as Varric’s words settled over them.  For Velatha, Cole, and Iron Bull, it was a heavy reminder of the extraordinary person they’d lost.  For the dwarf, it carried the pain of accepting that he would never see his best friend again.  For Anders, however, it offered a dangerous opportunity.

“I may not be able to physically enter the Fade,” the renegade said at length, “but _you_ can.”

Velatha, who had felt like she was intruding on something very personal and had been pointedly looking away from the entire display, let her eyes snap onto Anders.  They flew wide at the sheer determination etched into his pale face; she had never seen someone more serious about anything in her life, and that was saying something.

Varric, who had been looking between both mages with mingled shock and outrage across his face, erupted, “What?!  No!  Don’t you even think about it, Blondie.”

“Tell me you don’t feel at least a little responsible,” Anders pushed, his eyes never leaving the Inquisitor’s.  “If Hawke hadn’t done what she did, you never would have survived to save the world from Corypheus.  If there is the smallest chance that she could still be alive, don’t you owe it to her to at least try?”

“This is madness!  She is _gone_ , Anders!” Varric continued to insist.  He was ignored, so he turned to his friend instead.  “Velatha, you’re not seriously listening to him?” he asked, a note of desperation underscoring his voice.

Velatha glanced briefly down at the dwarf, conflict warring over her angular features.  This was exactly why she never enjoyed being the Inquisitor.  Moments that required her to alienate people, destroy dreams, and accept or reject ridiculous, impossible adventures kept cropping up every time she turned around.  She felt like Varric was right, like there was no way Hawke could have possibly survived months alone in the Fade.  At the same time, Anders’ desperate grab for her guilt was working; if there was a chance that the Champion was alive, and she wanted that chance to exist, then she would never forgive herself for not taking it.

Several moments passed wherein Velatha stood with her mouth half open, trying to arrive at some kind of decision.  Varric was staring hard at her, mentally willing her to see reason.  Anders, however, didn’t relent in his persuasion.  His voice low and brimming with conviction, he warned, “I will look for her with or without your help.  Wherever I have to go, whatever I have to do to get into the Fade, I’ll do it or I’ll die in the attempt.”

“Any magic that’ll get you into the Fade physically _will_ kill you, or worse,” Varric interjected, still attempting to be some kind of voice of reason.

Anders still didn’t break the Inquisitor’s gaze as he admitted, “It would be no less than I deserve.”

Velatha swallowed, her stomach flipping uncomfortably.  Her eyes flickered between her dear friend and the strange mage, and part of her wanted to side with both of them.  In all reality, Varric was right and Hawke was dead.  Opening up a rift into the Fade, assuming the Veil at Adamant was still weak enough, was both stupid and dangerous.  Demons would be able to pour through unchecked, and whatever damage they did wouldn’t be worth if it they didn’t find Hawke.

At the same time, Anders was also right.  They all owed their lives to Hawke for what she did, and if she was alive, to leave her trapped would be poor repayment for her sacrifice.  She knew that Inquisition soldiers were still holding the old Grey Warden fortress; there would likely be casualties, but they could hold any demons at bay while the companions searched the Fade.

There was one other problem with choosing to follow Anders.  It would mean, without doubt, letting Solas get away.  They were behind in the search as it was, and leaving for Adamant would take them far away from anywhere he could have gone.  The trail would go cold, and they may not be able to find him again.

The Inquisitor’s heart sank down into her stomach and a resigned look crossed over her face.  The right thing to do was clear.

“Anders,” she began, although she needed to pause in order to steel herself to her course.  After a long, quiet moment, she finished, “We’ll help you, if we can.”


	6. Faded for Her

Solas perched on the crest of a wide root, green with moss and nearly as tall as a man where it curved up above the ground. One knee was drawn up to his chest, bare heel and toes planted firmly upon their bark seat; the other foot he let dangle free as his storm colored eyes observed the ancient world around him. Trees rose up out of the ground, their branches reaching for the sun like the arms of waking giants. Light streamed through the emerald leaves overhead, dancing and shimmering with the movements of the forest while strange birds, long since lost to modern man, chirped and twittered just out of sight. A low chorus of insect chatter gently underscored their delicate, lilting melodies.

Solas had been here for hours, yet still he found himself nearly overwhelmed by the inescapable beauty of this place, and the profound sorrow accompanying the knowledge that it was gone.

After his investigation of the ruins, the elf traveled north toward the foothills surrounding Dragon's Peak. He might have continued forward, likely skirting Denerim and rounding across the Bannorn, save that he had detected no signs of pursuit since moving on. It seemed that, much to his surprise, the forest had proved superior to the Inquisitor's tracking abilities. Fate, and all of her unfathomable machinations, had finally come down on his side.

It was a bittersweet realization.

With Velatha no longer on his tail, or at least far enough behind to allow him a little room to breathe, he had some time to reassess his plans; in some respects, he also had some time to make plans. Since emerging from uthenera, the goals of Fen'Harel had been abundantly clear; the devastation his folly had wrought needed to be undone. The call for redemption sounded in the deepest chambers of his heart, unabated, every moment he spent in this world and the Beyond. Its lament, its keening for the loss of what was truly magical in this world, weighed on his mind so heavily that there were moments when he wondered if he himself might sink down into the abyss for his mistakes. His path was clear, illuminated by the spirits of his long forgotten kin, and he could not stray from it.

And yet…

Solas was not Fen'Harel, at least not entirely, not anymore. Living in this world had changed him in ways he could never have predicted; he had seen things, terrible things, that had made his path all the clearer, but he had also seen things that gave him hope for a beautiful future. There were those in the world who held the power to liberate the elves and create a reality in which all races could live as equals. In such a world, it could be possible to correct the mistakes of the past. Much would still be lost to the ages, but the elves could work together to build a new Arlathan, one erected on the shoulders of truth and knowledge, not the backs of servants to ancient creatures with agendas of their own. Such a future would be impossible if he restored the ancient gods to the People.

He could not pretend as though he had never considered it, although each time he entertained the idea of simply letting his kin live on in half-remembered legends, his sorrow and his fear reared their heads and made themselves known with more violence and devastation than any Archdemon could ever achieve. Its taint spread throughout his mind, corrupting the few lovely things this new age had managed to produce, turning them into pale reflections of what they truly were in the face of what he knew they might have been.

Slowly, the taint was beginning to infect the Inquisitor as well.

Her beauty and her light would always remain undefiled; nothing in the world could ever diminish her spirit in such a way that Solas would cease to view it as the rare and marvelous thing that it was. His memories of her, of their time together, however...those had ceased to be the vestiges of warmth and comfort that they once were, and they grew all the colder for how he longed to return to them.

That Velatha had been thrown off his scent, or stopped her search entirely, was both a blessing and a curse. He now had more freedom to continue his quest, to repair what his pride had so foolishly broken, but it was exactly that freedom to which he had become shackled. In the light of her pale eyes lived his vision of a new Arlathan. In her he saw endless possibilities, endless opportunities to share his knowledge, to progress and grow into something better than he once was, better than what the People had become. Without her, there could be no turning from his course. Even if his conscience would allow it, that path was closed to him; it was never fully an option, but still he felt the cold blade of its loss, of the truth of her absence, pierce his heart.

A sharp chill entered the air around Solas, dragging him from the pool of melancholy into which he had descended. His surroundings, darker now than they had been, returned to him. With a gentle, resigned sigh, he tightened his hold around the Fade and threw away the shadows that had encroached upon this beautiful, ancient place. Almost instantly it became as it was when he'd first sat down to reflect upon his predicament; it was just as breathtaking, just as captivating, but it was empty.

With profound effort, he broke the magnetic pull of his thoughts away from his lost love and turned them back to his lost people, to where he needed to go next. He had hoped that wandering the Fade for a while, that entering a place that had once belonged to the ancient elves, might give him some direction; after all, knowing what needed to be done did not necessarily equate to knowing how to get it done. He believed he had the correct pieces, the artifact which may have been Elgar'nan's foci and hopefully enough power to unlock it, but the correct place had yet to be discovered; unfortunately all of the Eluvians he knew of were either damaged or under Morrigan's control, and the link between the Fade and the realm of his kin rotted away long ago.

Tenuously he held onto the hope that he would uncover something soon that might lead him in the right direction. In ancient times, Eluvians were not what one would call uncommon, even if they were somewhat limited; it stood to reason that a number of them, albeit a small number, would still exist. What state they may be in when he found them was a different story, but if he could be so lucky to find one intact, he may now have the time to attempt to restore one to working order.

All of this, of course, assumed that he was correct in guessing the true nature of the power of the orb he carried.

Solas dipped his head and allowed his brow to fall into the bend of his open hand. Another soft sigh escaped through his nose, the whispered reflection of energy spent battling the waves of remorse and longing that threatened to crash over the shores of his mind.

The tide broke and receded in a second, and he sat bolt upright.

He felt the presence of the spirit before he heard it, small, gentle steps bending the dream-like grass beneath its feet. Immediately he wondered why it would manifest in such a way that it would interact with the "physical" aspects of the Fade; typically spirits, or those he was most experienced with, chose to remain in their natural states, beings of beautiful light that generally resembled indistinct human forms. Rarely had he encountered one that chose to walk over the ground, to brush aside the leaves of low hanging branches.

Slowly, he slipped to his feet and turned to face it.

The vision before him at once filled him with terror and surprise, with sorrow and longing. It stole the beat from his heart, the gravity from his stomach, and the air from his lungs, one small, barely audible word riding it through his lips: "Velatha?"

A tender smile crossed her full lips, one he knew well. It was a lover's smile, the kind that she wore for no one else, and each time he had seen it he had felt both treasured and tarnished. Long before she told him that she loved him, he could see it in her smile; long before it came to pass, he saw his betrayal in it, too.

As it had done ever since his disappearance, the sight of his love proved too overwhelming for Solas. He took hold of the Fade and willed himself to wake up, to leave the blinding vision behind that he might catch his breath for but a moment. However, the scene before him did not move or darken as he had expected it to.

A hint of shock crept into his barely composed features as he attempted to rouse himself once again, to no avail.

His gaze snapped onto the vision, his silver eyes narrowed in mingled curiosity and suspicion. "What manner of spirit are you?" he questioned, careful to preserve the even tone of his voice. Once beyond his initial shock, he dispelled all notions that the woman before him was truly the Inquisitor; setting aside the unlikeliness that the two of them would meet in the Fade, he knew in his heart that, should they encounter each other again, she would not think to grace him with such a gentle expression. In all probability, the spirit had simply felt the bond that existed between himself and the Inquisitor and chosen to assume her form. Spirits often manifested as loved ones to dreamers in the Fade; it allowed them to approach without inspiring fear or to tempt much more forcefully.

The spirit, having paused so he could observe it, continued its approach, its steps slow and measured. " _I am sorry, Fen'Harel. It was not my intent to disturb you,"_  the spirit answered. It spoke with his love's voice, in his ancient tongue.

The sound stirred within Solas a raging sea of dreams he had worked tirelessly to quiet. The spirit, however, demanded his full attention. Adopting the language in which it had spoken, he asked, " _What drew you to me, spirit?"_

" _I felt your presence and heard your laments. Such music, a dirge for the death of possibility,"_  it said softly as it came to stand before the elf.

Its proximity was excruciating. Solas longed to lift his hand, to brush its crimson hair behind its pointed ear, but he could bear such a lie even less than he could bear the truth.

With effort he retained mastery over his composure. Through the searing agony, he queried, " _Might I know who you are?"_

" _I am but a dream, nameless and forgotten. Of those who once guarded the heart of the forest, I am all that remains,"_  it replied.

" _Were you once one of the Elvhen?"_  Solas asked quickly. He could see no other ready explanation for the spirit's presence here, nor for how easily it seemed to match his power over the Fade; moreover, something familiar lingered in the spirit's presence, like the melody of a song hovering just beyond memory's reach.

The spirit continued to smile Velatha's smile, perfect lips parted in an expression of contentment he had never thought to see again. " _I was,"_ it answered simply.

" _How do you remain?"_ he asked gently in return, his voice filled with uncomprehending wonder. The urge to reach out and touch the spirit became an ache in his heart, both to feel Velatha's skin beneath his fingers and to create a connection with this being, with one of his true people.

Sadness crept into the spirit's smile, lingering around the corners of its mouth. " _I slept. My body decayed long ago, but I continue to dream here, beyond all things,"_ it explained.

Realization struck Solas like a ray of sunshine, soft and blinding. This spirit had entered uthenera long ago, while the ancient elves still spanned Thedas. Falon'din and Dirthamen guided it through the Fade, showed it wonders that even his people could scarcely imagine, until he had locked them away. One day this soul could have returned to the People, could have brought with it untold brilliance and joy, if only he had not denied it a guide.

Sorrow, vast and unchecked, seized his heart. " _I am sorry,"_ he said softly, the words dropping like lead from his tongue. They weighed his head down, pulling his chin close to his chest, his eyelids over the storms raging inside their glassy spheres.

The spirit touched him with Velatha's hand, familiar, soft fingertips traveling along the underside of his jaw. " _I see your intent, Fen'Harel,"_ the spirit told him, its voice a well of boundless compassion. " _You owe me no apology."_

" _Would that it were true."_

Solas's murmured words were a window into the dark sea churning just below his pointed features. He had no doubt that this spirit could feel its every movement, the break of every frothing wave. The Fade was ruled by emotion, after all; it was the one place in which he could never fully conceal his pain. Whatever it sensed within him, the spirit said no more. The two stood as they were, statues from a bygone age, taking comfort in the knowledge that they had not been completely forgotten.

Ages passed in silence, broken only by the breath of the ancient forest. It wasn't until it seemed like the trees themselves might crumble around them that the spirit again requested Solas's attention. With impossible care, it brushed the backs of Velatha's knuckles along his jaw and down to his chin, just the way she used to do so long ago. He lifted his eyes out of habit, and his heart broke yet again at the sight of the pools of pale green light looking back at him.

" _Do not despair,"_  the spirit said softly, the caress of its velvet voice sliding over his skin like a dagger. " _No mistake which has been made cannot be unmade, no wounds cut that cannot be healed. There is still time to mend that which was broken."_

" _Time, perhaps, but the path eludes me,"_  Solas admitted wearily. It was exhausting, standing across from this spirit and confronting the price for righting his greatest wrong, and the reminder that he was not the only one to pay it.

Still, the spirit's smile would not fade. " _Hold your course, Fen'Harel, and all will become clear. Look beyond the wall, and you shall find the answers you seek."_

Solas's eyes widened in surprise that he could not conceal. " _What wall?"_  he asked, his voice ringing with urgency, but already the spirit was withdrawing. Its hand fell from his cheek and it backed slowly away from him, its lips turned upward in the same loving smile with which it had approached him. He wanted to call after it, if not to wring more meaning from its words then simply to beg it to stay a while longer, but it was too late.

He watched on as the spirit dissolved into an indistinct blur of pale golden light, its essence carried away on a gentle breeze.


	7. The Renegade's Tale

Adamant loomed on the horizon, the edges of its blackened, partially destroyed towers glinting faintly beneath the starlight.  It stood only a couple of hours away; tomorrow morning they would march inside and, if it was still possible, tear open the Veil.  They would enter the Fade again, in the flesh, on the slim chance that Hawke was still alive.  If she wasn’t, they went in with the goal of recovering what was left of her body.

The more likely scenario weighed heavily on the minds of each of the adventurers.

Velatha turned her gaze away from the fortress and instead looked to her companions, their faces illuminated by the dim light of the dying fire in the center of their small camp.  Varric sat hunched over, his hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees.  His eyes were fixed resolutely on the last of the small flames, some inscrutable emotion swirling in their depths.  The Inquisitor guessed that he was probably thinking about Hawke, or maybe trying not to; he’d already let her go, and she knew that his reluctance to commit to this course stemmed more from his grief, and fear of additional losses, than from lack of belief in what they were trying to do.

Cole sat between the dwarf and the qunari, the brim of his hat obscuring his features.  One of his daggers twirled and danced between his hands, passed back and forth, over and under with such speed and fluidity of movement that it was almost unnerving.  Occasionally his head would twitch left or right, a tell to indicate that he was glancing at his friends; he continued to avoid eye contact, or any kind of contact, with Anders.  Each time the mage came too close, he began muttering about something burning and promptly relocated himself to the other side of camp, or to the other side of the nearest person.  Oddly enough, the only one it seemed not to bother was Anders.  Each time, he simply smiled sadly and made a more concerted effort to keep his distance.

Iron Bull seemed the least fazed by all that had happened.  Initially he’d questioned Velatha’s readiness to follow the crazy-probably-possessed mage, but once she’d made it clear that her conscience wouldn’t allow her to risk someone else’s survival against her own selfish desires, he committed himself to their course without further argument.  He sat with his ankles crossed, feet stretched out very near the fire, picking his fingernails with a sharp shard of bone left over from supper.  Every few minutes he would look up and glance around, but for the most part, he let the silence settle.  Enough dark anticipation hung in the air that he didn’t want to be the one to disturb it.

Velatha’s eyes made it all the way around to her left, to the last person included in their small circle.  Anders sat slouched in his seat, his shoulders low and his eyes fixed on the fire.  Aside from a few private conversations with Varric throughout the journey, he hadn’t been very talkative.  He was certainly nothing like what she’d come to expect after reading about him in Varric’s _Tale of the Champion_.  Considering all he’d lost and how ill he still appeared, however, she wasn’t very surprised.

Her curiosity about him hadn’t waned, though, and it only grew when she realized that he wasn’t sitting entirely still.  A subtle movement drew her gaze to his hands; a thin chain dangled between his knees toward the ground, and something metallic flashed between his fingers.

“Anders, what is that?” she asked.  She kept her voice quiet, more to avoid disturbing him than to conceal  the conversation from her friends; they were close enough to hear, regardless.

The mage started slightly as she intruded on his thoughts.  He looked down at his hands and a somewhat surprised look crossed his face; it was as though he’d forgotten he was holding onto anything at all.  Soon, however, the mild shock gave way to a subtle sadness visible only in the faint lines around his eyes.  At length, he answered, “It’s a Chantry amulet from Tevinter.”

Velatha couldn’t conceal her surprise.  “But I thought you hated the Chantry,” she said, doing her best to soften the bluntness that had crept into her voice.  The amulet was an odd thing to have anywhere outside of Tevinter, but she couldn’t imagine what Anders of all people was doing with one.

“It was a gift,” he answered, a slight edge to his voice.  He turned the amulet over in his hands and ran his thumb across the black Sunburst symbol emblazoned on its face.  The action seemed to soften him, and after another few moments he admitted, “Hawke gave it to me...a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” the Inquisitor began quickly, but she trailed off part way through.  She wanted to believe that Hawke was alive and waiting to be rescued, but death clung far more firmly to her tone.

Anders’ eyes flicked down to the ground and then back to the amulet in his hands.  Silently he shook his head, a barely perceptible movement that more closely resembled a twitch than an actual gesture.  Eventually something that very nearly resembled a smile touched the corners of his lips.

While the Inquisitor regretted bringing up the mage’s absent lover, she could feel her curiosity slowly getting the better of her.  Ever since she read Varric’s book, which was horribly vague on the details near the end, she’d wanted to know what became of the Champion’s possessed rebel sweetheart.  Each time she questioned him directly, Varric insisted that he had no clue where Anders went after leaving the Circle mages they’d escaped with.  Questions put to Hawke during her stay at Skyhold had yielded virtually identical results.  From the look of the man beside her now, it seemed that whatever journey he’d undertaken had not been kind to him; illness and loss could only account for so much of the weight that hung in his gaze and around his shoulders.

Silence had only just settled comfortably over the camp again when Velatha worked up enough nerve to look back to the other mage.  “Anders, could I ask you something?” she ventured delicately.

Reluctantly, he took his eyes from the amulet he still toyed with and pulled them up to the Inquisitor.  “I don’t see why not,” he replied, a little flatly.

“You don’t need to answer, but...I can’t help but wonder why you didn’t stay with Hawke after you fled Kirkwall.  She mentioned something about Corypheus affecting your mind, but she didn’t say how or where you went,” she explained.  A restrained quality hung about her voice, as though she were asking indecent questions about the deceased at a funeral.

Anders’ gaze fell back to the ground and a heavy sigh slipped through his prominent nose.  Velatha, not wanting to stare, chanced a glance around the fire; everybody was watching them, clearly interested in the reason behind his absence throughout the worldwide ordeal.  His awareness of the eyes upon him manifested in the way he seemed to wrestle over whether or not to finally address the looming, long unanswered question; the Inquisitor imagined that she could see the struggle raging in the lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

After a few moments, some of the tension drained out of Anders’ posture, and he sat up a little straighter.  “I suppose I owe you all that much, don’t I?” he consented, a kind of dark amusement coloring his voice.  “Would you like the long or the short of it?”

“Start from the beginning, Blondie," Varric said from across the fire, his broad features cut with shadows, “and don't spare us the gory details."

The corner of the mage's mouth twitched upward. “All right," he agreed. A light sigh escaped him as he sat up straighter still, his gaze moving back to the amulet in his hands. He ran his thumb over the chiseled symbol once more, a lingering movement that seemed out of place with an inanimate keepsake, and then slipped it over his head and beneath his collar.

“After Knight-Commander Meredith got what she deserved,” he began, “the rest of us, particularly me, needed to get out of the city.  Hawke wanting to keep me around was irrelevant; after what I’d done, starting a war and all, it was the hangman’s noose for me if I was captured.  According to Aveline, anyone caught with me was likely to be punished as well.  She didn’t owe me any favors, but Hawke convinced her to help us all get out of Kirkwall.  Once the Templars regrouped, she and her men kept them off our scent long enough for us to get a headstart.

“On our way out of the Gallows we ran into a group of Circle mages who managed to survive the fighting.  We couldn’t just leave them, so those who wanted a fresh start followed after us.  Once we got to the docks, Isabela commandeered a ship to get us out to sea, and from there we traveled west.  It wasn’t...a fun journey, as you can probably imagine, but it got us out of the Templars’ reach, at least.

“We docked in Cumberland, but only a few days passed before the Order got wind of where we were.  It wasn’t exactly a secret that I was the one who destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry, so Hawke and I knew we had to get out of the city as quickly as we could.  Fenris, of course, decided not to accompany us, not that I was particularly sad to see him go; he tried to kill me twice while we were at sea.  Probably would have succeeded, too, if Hawke hadn’t been there.  Isabela wanted to flee to Rivain, but since neither Hawke nor I were in the market for a pirate’s life, we parted ways.

“Then it was just Hawke, Varric, and me looking out for the few mages who stayed with us.  We managed to hide in Cumberland for a few more days before we left to go north, to Hasmal.  News reached the city that rebellion was brewing in the rest of the Circles, so we decided that we should offer our assistance.  Since both Hawke and I were wanted, Varric,” he nodded to the dwarf across the fire, “went out into the city with the mages to bring back supplies the night before our journey.  Except...you never came back.  The mages gave Hawke the letter you passed on to her, but she never told me what it said.”

The dwarf shifted awkwardly, his mouth set in an uncomfortable grimace.  “I’m sorry, Blondie,” he admitted, “but I couldn’t stay, and you know how I am with long goodbyes.”

“It’s all right.  I understand,” the mage answered, although his expression suggested that his acceptance referred to far more than simply the incident in question. Nevertheless, he took in a breath and went on, “Anyway…We made it to Hasmal and found our way into the Circle.  The atmosphere there was tense; many of the mages wanted to break free, but just as many were convinced that rebellion wasn’t the answer.  The poor fools had been locked up for so long that the very idea of freedom terrified them.  One of the loyalists tipped a Templar off about us, and before we knew it we were on the road again.  Of course, the other mages rose up soon after, but I never heard whether they were successful.

“From there, it was just the two of us.  We traveled east across the Free Marches, went to other Circles, helped them reclaim their freedom.  Starkhaven, Ansburg, Markham, all the way down to Ostwick.  Everywhere we went mages were more and more eager to stand up to the Templars, and we did all we could for them until there was nowhere left for us to go.  So, we found a ship to take us south, to Highever.  We heard that the rebellion in the Ferelden Circle was already well underway, and both of us felt it was our responsibility to make sure it succeeded.

“We left port, and from there it took us a couple of weeks to get to Lake Calenhad.  When we finally did, we found the whole place surrounded by Templars.  The rebellion had been going on far longer and progressed much further than we thought, and the mages were in the middle of giving the Order a real run for it.  By the time we got there, they’d already called for reinforcements twice, and all the panic in the ranks told us they were losing control of the situation.  All the recruits were running about like chickens with their heads cut off; even the threats of their superiors couldn’t stop them saying it’d be better to give up now than risk whatever abominations were waiting inside the tower.  When the boats came for them, they were practically soiling themselves.  I’ve never seen anything quite so funny in my entire life...well, all right, once I saw a drunk dwarf try to ride a bronto through Vigil’s Keep, but that’s not really the same kind of funny.”

The ghost of a smile touched Anders’ lips, and when he continued, a note of fondness underscored his low voice.  “Anyway, the Circle was close to falling even without our help, but why waste a perfectly good set-up, right?  We had the element of surprise, so we ambushed the Templar camp right there.  No plans, just ran right in and threw fireballs about until there was nothing left but ash and righteous smoke curling up to the heavens.  After that, we got a boat to the tower and joined the fight properly.  Most of the mages were still alive and pretty well dug in, and with the two of us there to support them, we took the tower in just under a fortnight.”

“Sounds like you were living the dream,” Varric interjected with a chuckle.  Even Iron Bull looked impressed, if a bit surprised at the fact that the man sitting across from him was capable of that caliber of slaughter.

Anders, for his part, looked almost happy for the first time since he joined the company.  Nostalgia glinted in his dark eyes, and the pallor of his complexion was less pronounced.  “We were,” he agreed, but no sooner had the words left his lips than the small smile that occupied them began to fade away.  His voice dulled as he continued, “Anyhow...we stayed on for a couple of days, to give counsel in the wake of all the destruction, but we had to move on.  The Templars had seen me, more were on their way, and everybody knew who the two of us were.  We didn’t want to take any chances, so we went to the one place that probably wouldn’t turn us away at the door.”

“The Wardens,” Velatha supplied.  She was completely absorbed in Anders’ tale; throughout the course of it, she’d turned toward him, hands clasped in her lap, her rapt attention fixed only on the storyteller.

“Exactly,” he answered.  “We managed to make it to Vigil’s Keep, but only just.  A Templar spotted Hawke while she was buying supplies in Amaranthine.  The bastard fetched his Knight-Captain and ran us all the way to the bloody Keep.  Grey Wardens are independent of the law to a certain extent, but I honestly believe they wouldn’t have opened the door for me if Oghren hadn’t happened to be there.  Just imagine a dwarf in full armor that probably hasn’t been removed or properly cleaned in months threatening to draw tits on the new recruits and stick them on pikes outside the gate and you’ll get the general idea of our welcome.  The Templars were furious, of course, but after he ran out and beheaded two of them singlehandedly, that was that.

“Anyway...the Wardens gave us safe harbor, and all I had to do was re-enlist...sort of.  Told them I’d fight the good fight against the darkspawn again and promised not to run off, and they put me right to work.  They let Hawke stay around because of her brother, Carver.  Apparently he ended up making a name for himself after all.”

“Good.  Maybe now he’ll quit complaining about it,” Varric grumbled.

“You’d think that,” Anders almost chuckled.  “We were there for months before we got wind of him.  One afternoon he just showed up with five or six other Wardens, including Alistair, the one who helped the Hero of Ferelden slay the Archdemon.  Apparently some unusual activity in the Deep Roads sent them back to Corypheus’s prison in the Vimmarks, but all their reports were inconclusive.  Garren, the Warden-Commander at the time and a real ass, too, was so angry that he didn’t even let them have two days’ rest before he sent them to Weisshaupt to dig through the archives, only this time he wanted me to go along with them.  He figured if he sent me off it might help get the Wardens out from beneath some of the Chantry’s fire, and, of course, Hawke wasn’t about to be left behind.

“We left the next morning and spent the following months up to our ears in musty old books that should have fallen apart ages ago.  ‘Course, we didn’t find much.  Apparently  not many records about ancient magisters survived the decline of the Imperium.  In the end, all we had to go on was our knowledge of what happened in Corypheus’s prison, Alistair and Carver’s observations from the Deep Roads, and a few barely legible ancient Warden accounts of strange darkspawn behavior, changes just before Blights and things like that.  It wasn’t much, but we went under the bloody ground again anyway.

“Our entrance was in Kal-Sharok, the dwarven city, and from there we followed the tunnels south.  We meant to travel back to the prison, see if the darkspawn were still behaving erratically, but all the tunnels leading under the Vimmarks had been collapsed.  Carver swore up and down that they were open the last time he made the journey, so fools that we were, we decided to find a way around.  

“Our next mistake was leaving Alistair in charge of the maps, because after weeks of not seeing the sun he informed us that, while he had no clue as to our actual whereabouts, he believed that we had stumbled upon an abandoned thaig somewhere beneath western Orlais.  That was all fine, or it might have been at least okay if we hadn’t gone further in and found the whole place overrun by darkspawn.  We were Wardens, though, so it shouldn’t have been a problem, and it wasn’t really.  Not until they started talking to us.”

“ _Talking?_ ” Velatha immediately balked.  She hadn’t meant to interrupt the story, but apart from Corypheus she’d never heard of talking darkspawn before.

By the expressions on her friends’ faces, neither had they.  “Now, when you say ‘talking,’ you mean…?” Iron Bull pushed.  Even he was now leaning forward, elbows on his giant knees, his expression at once intrigued and defiant.

“I mean an emissary walked right up to us, proud as you please, and quite clearly said, _‘You be not welcome here.  Leave now and there will be no further bloodshed!’_ ” Anders rasped in what was evidently his impression of the darkspawn in question.  “Really, I’m serious,” he added, much more seriously.

“Then what did you do?” Velatha prodded.

“Obviously we killed it,” Anders answered unceremoniously.  “It was a darkspawn, we had swords, you know how it goes.  Alistair and Carver wanted to keep pushing in anyway, but after that, I managed to convince them that we should turn back.  I’ve, um...had dealings with talking darkspawn before, and─”

“Wait a minute,” Iron Bull said quickly, taking his turn to interrupt the tale.  “So...darkspawn actually talk?  Like, with words and not weird ass growls?  And people know about this?”

“Yes and no,” Anders said, his surprise due less to the question and more to who was finally showing an interest in him.  “‘Oh, did you know they talk now?’ isn’t exactly how we open our parties.  Sorry, apparently I have to back up a little.  I was conscripted into the Wardens by the Hero of Ferelden about six months after the Blight ended.  This was when we discovered the first of the talking darkspawn.  Even though the Archdemon was dead, they were still organizing and attacking cities and farmland.  It was practically unheard of, so, of course, we investigated.

“Long story short, there was a...creature, a darkspawn, who called itself the Architect.  He created some ritual using Grey Warden blood that ‘freed’ the darkspawn from the call of the Old Gods.  It let them talk and think for themselves, but, go figure, some of them went insane and started trying to destroy him and the Wardens and everything else in the process.  We killed the darkspawn who were behind all the destruction, but the Hero let the Architect live.  We’re still not exactly sure what the consequences of that will be, but I suppose only time will tell.”

“Why the hell would anybody let that thing live?  Thinking darkspawn...that’s not a disaster waiting to happen,” Bull pointed out, disdain twisting his ashen features.

“That’s exactly what I told him, but the Hero’s reasons are always his own,” Anders shrugged.  “Anyway, it’s my assumption that the thaig we found was some kind of base for the Architect.  Whether he was actually there or his... _enlightened_...darkspawn were using it for something else I can’t say, but whatever the case, we retreated back to Kal-Sharok.

“When we made it back to the surface, the sky was cracked open and everybody was shouting that the end was nigh and the Maker was coming back to punish the wicked once and for all.  Nobody could tell us definitively what had happened, so we went back to Weisshaupt to find some answers and explain what we found.  The Wardens there were looking into encounters with intelligent darkspawn so we figured we’d be big news.  That was when we found out about the Conclave and the death of Divine Justinia, and our thaig was shuffled down the list of priorities.

“The reports of Red Templars began coming in soon after that.  The Wardens wouldn’t do anything about it, but the First said it was something to keep an eye on.  Fingers in all the pies and no pies kind of business.  Soon after _that_ , though, came the reports from Orlais.

“Two whole Warden outposts were abandoned and all their supplies were sold off out of the blue.  This was pretty unusual, as Wardens tend to stay in one place once they’ve established themselves, so we sent a few inquiries to the Warden-Commander just to see that nothing troublesome was afoot.  We never heard anything back, though.  Eventually Alistair and a small company were sent to Montsimmard, and…”  Anders trailed off suddenly.  Something seemed to strike him, and the unexpected energy with which he’d told his tale drained away before everyone’s eyes.  His own dropped to the ground and, somewhat lamely, he finished, “Well, from there I suppose we all know what happened.”

The companions’ surprise grew thick in the air around the camp.  Nobody had expected Anders to stop so abruptly, and all let a few moments pass just in case he decided to continue.

When he didn’t, Varric, as gently as he could, reminded the mage, “That still doesn’t explain how you fell in with the Dalish.”

A heavy sigh escaped Anders.  “No, I guess it doesn’t,” he admitted; it was clear that he had hoped nobody would pick up on that detail.  He let out a small noise, somewhere between another sigh and a grunt, and raised a hand to rub his eyes.  It traveled down the length of his face before dropping back into his lap, and then he continued, “All right.  It’s not as exciting as you might think.

“After Alistair left and we didn’t hear back from _him_ , Hawke started to wonder if perhaps the Breach in the sky and the Wardens behaving strangely were connected somehow.  She wanted to investigate, but the only thing we’d ever seen that could influence Wardens so strongly was Corypheus.  That meant...that meant that I couldn’t follow her.  He got into my head and...some bad things happened when we fought him the first time, so for her safety, and mine, she needed to leave without me...and, she did.”

Anders cleared his throat, his gaze still fixed resolutely on the ground in front of his feet.  After a pause, he went on, “Then I started thinking that if Corypheus _had_ somehow gotten to the Wardens in Orlais, what was stopping him from getting to the rest of us?  I tried to talk to the First Warden about it, but since I had no evidence, he didn’t believe me.  I’ll admit, I haven’t exactly been the most trustworthy person in recent years...Anyway, I decided that if I couldn’t help Hawke, I could at least make sure Corypheus didn’t kill me before she returned.

“I left Weisshaupt and went south, and on the way I joined up with a group of dwarven merchant caravans on their way to Val Royeaux.  They fed me, and in exchange I helped guard the caravans from bandits along the highway until we reached the capital.  After that, I took a ship to Jader and went east.  I avoided cities, stopped in smaller villages when I needed supplies, otherwise I just kept moving.  I didn’t trust the Wardens or the mages, what few of them I encountered, anyway, and those nasty Red Templars were everywhere...After roaming the Bannorn for almost a month, I decided to take my chances in the Brecilian Forest.  There was enough game to hunt and nobody would bother me...it seemed like a good idea up until I actually did it.

“A couple of hunters from the clan I was with found me a few weeks later.  It was obvious I wasn’t following them, so frankly I’m surprised they even approached me.  I must have just been too close to the clan or...something.  It was when they began to discuss whether or not they should shoot me that I started saying everything I could think of to get them to see I wasn’t a threat, and one of those things included being a friend of the Hero of Ferelden.  He was Dalish and evidently saved their clan from a terrible curse during the Blight, so they brought me to the Keeper and, after a lengthy explanation of everything you’ve just heard, she let me stay on for a while.”

“And that was when we found you?” Velatha asked, hushed sympathy underscoring her voice.

“That was when you found me,” Anders nodded, his own words harder than they had been throughout the course of the tale.  He sat up a little straighter and laced his fingers together in his lap, some distant emotion swirling behind his shaded eyes.

Varric let out a light sigh from the darkness across from the dead fire.  “I gotta hand it to you, Blondie,” he said heavily, “that was quite a story.”

“Thank you for telling us,” the Inquisitor added as she emerged from the events of the tale, still working to wrap her mind around all she’d heard.

Anders nodded to them both but said nothing.

Wordlessly, Cole stood from where he sat crosslegged on the bare ground and moved off to his pack.  The eyes of everyone but the Warden traveled with him and watched as he extracted his bedroll and began to lay it out; his movements were easy and fluid, if a bit slow, and he kept his back to them.  Whatever his thoughts on Anders’ journey or what lay ahead of them the next day, they remained his own.

Iron Bull took his cue from the kid and looked to the sky.  He squinted for a moment before he rolled his wide shoulders and tilted his head to the side, a resounding crack carrying through the camp.  “It’s getting late,” he observed.  “We should hit the sack if we’re seriously going through with this.”

“Good idea,” Velatha agreed.  She pulled herself to her feet, her movements graceful despite the stiffness in her back and behind her knees.  Her hands moved to her hips, and she did her best to stretch her muscles out while her friends did the same.

Just as she was opening her eyes and letting out a much relieved sigh, she heard Varric call, “Where are you going?”

Anders had turned his back on the company and took a few steps away from the dark camp.  His eyes were trained toward the Abyssal Reach, the great chasm stretching down into the Deep Roads.  It may have simply been a trick of the dark, but Velatha imagined that the night seemed somehow thicker in the place where he stood.

The mage, for his part, felt no need to turn and see, for the hundredth time since he’d joined them, three familiar sets of eyes scrutinizing him.  It hadn’t escaped his notice that the Inquisitor and Company had a tendency to watch him like they were waiting for him to spontaneously combust.  He couldn’t say he necessarily enjoyed the way Cole seemed to be able to pry into his mind and vocalize exactly what he felt, but even that was preferable to feeling like the rest of them were constantly examining him underneath a magnifying glass.  After all he’d just relived, the feeling was even more intense than usual.

He wanted to pretend that the reason laid with the fact that he was a stranger, that he was a sick, surly man who’d given them no reason to trust him, but he knew that the reality was far simpler.  He was an abomination, and they were waiting for the moment when he would have to be put down.

Hawke’s face swam before him in the darkness, her black hair melting into the shadows, the fur from the cowl of her mantle brushing the underside of her jaw.  He held onto the image in his mind’s eye for as long as he could, but barely a moment passed before it was swept away by the winds and the quiet ethereal music riding their currents.  He listened as it grew louder in the silence, and he knew they wouldn’t have to wait very long.

Anders turned his head slightly and called back, “I’ll take first watch.”


	8. Into the Fade, Part I:  Through the Rift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I would like to humbly apologize to any readers still following this story for how long it's taken me to give you all an update. Rest assured that they will continue to come somewhat regularly in the future! That said, I would encourage anyone picking up the story again with this latest chapter to consider rereading those that came before. Prior to posting this I made edits to each of them (except chapter six); some were very small, others (like those made to chapter seven) were very large and subtly but drastically altered the direction in which the story is moving. Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you enjoy this new, improved, and continually progressing story!

“Open the gates!” someone bellowed from up on the ramparts.

The heavy doors of the fortress swung open before the adventurers, Adamant’s torchlit interior exposed before them.  If it weren’t for the uneasy feeling nestled in the pit of his stomach, Varric might have made a joke about how miraculous it was that the guards had even recognized them after their extended holiday in the less civilized lands of Thedas.  Reputations were everything, however, and judging by the fuss the Inquisitor’s unexpected presence was drumming up, he had to assume that whatever stories the Inquisition’s leaders were spreading about her whereabouts went above and beyond what they’d actually been up to.  Just as well; he thought that they could do with a little bit of fanfare that morning.

Of course, there were no carpets or banners unfurled, no trumpet blasts to signal their arrival in the dim pre-dawn light.  Those soldiers who were already close to the gates formed a line and crossed their arms over their chests in gestures of loyalty as the party walked the length of the small courtyard; the dwarf noted the proud stoicism occupying their features, the excitement in the eyes of some of the less seasoned recruits.

_Poor bastards_ , he thought as he passed them.

One of the men formerly posted on the ramparts trotted down a wooden staircase built against the wall, a temporary fix for the destroyed stone steps not far away.  The party came to a halt as he approached, all but the Inquisitor who stepped forward to meet him.

As he’d done ever since that final battle with Corypheus, Varric kept one eye on his surroundings and the other on Lavellan.  He didn’t know how she did it.  She stood up, tall and proud, her back straight and her shoulders squared.  He couldn’t see her face, but he knew the expression it surely wore:  a serious set to her jaw and to her eyebrows, and unfathomable kindness buried in her pale green eyes.  To an unskilled observer, or any who knew her less than her immediate company, she would appear every inch the intimidating leader the legends already made her out to be.

He would never envy her that responsibility.

The soldier halted at a respectable distance from his commander.  He crossed his arms smartly in front of his chest and gave a shallow bow at the waist.  “Inquisitor,” he said firmly.

Velatha mirrored his gesture.

“I am Captain Kylon,” he went on as he straightened up.  “Please forgive the meager welcome.  We didn’t expect you, or anyone, for that matter.”

“There’s no need to apologize, Captain.  We hadn’t expected to be here, either,” Velatha answered.

Her understanding tone seemed to put the soldier more at ease.  After an appreciative nod, he asked, “What can I do for you?”

The Inquisitor shifted each of her heels in turn, the movement failing to reach beyond her knees.  The surrounding humans might have been oblivious to it, but Varric, from his angle, could see that she was unhappy about what she needed to ask.  Somehow, she refrained from hesitating as she replied, “I’m afraid my request requires something of an explanation.  Were you here when we captured Adamant from the Wardens?”

The Captain crossed his arms over his chest.  “I wasn’t, but I’ve heard the stories.”

“Then you know what happened?”

“Aye, the Warden-Commander using blood magic, the Archdemon showing up, Your Worship walking out of the Fade again, or so they say.”

“So they say,” Velatha nodded.

Her tone was vague enough that Varric had difficulty guessing her expression, and her intent.

“Are you familiar with Fade rifts, Captain?” she asked a moment later.

The Captain’s lips pressed together in a hard line and his brows lofted.  “Can’t say I am,” he said, shaking his head.

Velatha gave one slow nod.  “I need to open one.”

“Forgive me, Your Worship.  What exactly does that mean?”

“It means,” the Inquisitor began carefully, “that I need to open a portal into the Fade.  Here, in Adamant.”

“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand,” the Captain replied.  He squinted a little, as though narrowing his eyes would somehow bring the problem into focus.  “Isn’t that the place where the demons are kept?  Why would you want to go in there?”

Varric began to see the Inquisitor’s discomfort creep into the growing tension in her neck and shoulders.  With some effort, he continued to keep an eye on the exchange as she answered, “During the siege, we lost someone in the Fade.  The Champion of Kirkwall.  It’s possible that she might still be alive, and if that’s the case, we intend to find her.”

The squinting Captain nodded, but he said nothing.

Velatha continued, “When I open the rift, demons may come through it.  I can’t say how many or what you could expect.  I would ask you to hold them at bay while we search the Fade, but without more warning, I understand if you aren’t prepared to─”

“Say no more, Inquisitor,” the Captain asserted suddenly.  He finally ceased squinting.  “If it’s a guard you need, then a guard you shall have.  We’ll keep the bastards under control for you.”

The Inquisitor’s back stiffened in surprise.  “Thank you, Captain,” she answered immediately, some of that surprise, and just a little relief, making it into her voice.

“Just give us some time to rally the men and we’ll meet you in the main hall,” he finished.  After a quick nod, he turned his back on the companions and began to direct the nearest soldiers to take up arms and pass the word along.

Velatha turned back to her friends, a look on her face that clearly showed that she was unsure whether to be pleased or disheartened by how readily the Captain agreed to muster what few soldiers he had.  Varric wasn’t exactly shocked that the men were jumping at her word, however; he was closer to the common folk than she was, and he knew that if they hadn’t venerated her before she saved the world, they definitely did now.

“You inspire a great deal of loyalty, Inquisitor,” Anders remarked quietly from the dwarf’s side.  His tone was unusually neutral.

“You’d think I’d be used to it by now,” she smiled in return, the expression flitting over her features like a flicker of candlelight, disappearing quickly into the fading darkness.  “Come on.  I want to take a moment in the hall before the soldiers assemble.”

The Inquisitor began to lead the way through the fortress, following the generally rubble-free path that marked the way to their destination.  Iron Bull and Cole, each looking uneasy, followed directly after her, but Varric hung back a moment in order to walk beside his old friend.

It was odd, both seeing Anders after all this time as well as, over the course of the journey, coming to actually consider him a friend again.  The dwarf didn’t know if he would ever forgive him for his actions in Kirkwall, but the more time they spent in each other’s company, the more difficult it became to continue to keep him at arms’ length.  There was something very different about him, something unsettling that he just couldn’t put a finger on; it had worried him for days, and now that they were about to walk into a stupid and dangerous situation that could have catastrophic consequences, it worried him all the more.

“You alright, Blondie?” Varric asked, keeping his voice low to prevent his words from carrying.

Anders glanced down at him quickly and just as quickly looked straight ahead again.  “I’m fine, Varric,” he answered.  His voice held that same resigned, hardened quality it had toward the end of their time in Kirkwall.

The dwarf, for his part, wasn’t buying it.  “You know, if something’s going on with you, it’s okay to talk about it,” he ventured.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” came the flat reply.

Varric let out a long sigh, but he didn’t press the point.  He never pressed the point, even when it was obvious that he should.  Up until now, he’d avoided thinking about Hawke as much as possible to spare himself the pain of inevitable disappointment, but as the two of them walked in silence after the others, he couldn’t help but begin to hope that they would find her.   _She_ would be able to get it, whatever _it_ was, out of the surly mage.  It was obvious that whatever he was dealing with went beyond the measure of sadness he allowed himself to feel for Hawke; Varric could only hope that it had nothing to do with Justice, although all the evidence so far pointed to the contrary.

With a bit of willpower, the dwarf pushed his concerns to the back of his mind and tried to focus on the journey one step at a time, literally.  After a few more minutes, the group passed through the wide double doors leading into Adamant’s main hall, and that goal suddenly became much more difficult.  All the blood from the previous battle had long since washed away, but signs of its presence lingered everywhere.  One of the walls was partly demolished, likely from a trebuchet hit.  Spare bricks and rocks were gathered into the corners and planks of wood formed makeshift bridges over craters in the floor and gaps in the battlements.  Perhaps the most disturbing addition to the open room was the greatsword buried half to the hilt between the flagstones beside the round, raised dais in the center of the hall.

The Inquisitor approached the site of the former Fade rift, although she came to a sudden halt a full ten feet away.  Freezing as though she’d been immobilized, she skipped a beat before she muttered, “Whoa.”

Cole was still a few feet behind her before he began shaking his head emphatically and turned around.

As far as Varric was concerned, dwarves had absolutely no business establishing any connection whatsoever to the Fade, and even he could feel how thin the Veil still was in this place.  Something unnatural lingered in the air, something eerie and ineffable.  The hairs on the back of the dwarf’s neck shot up, and he immediately began to feel as though he was being watched.  Soldiers had started to cluster in one half of the hall, but no man could ever inspire the kind of ice-down-the-back-of-your-tunic chill that was currently creeping down his short spine.

“Well, this is lovely,” he grumbled, mostly just to relieve some of his own tension.  It didn’t work.

“I suppose the good news is that opening a rift is definitely possible,” Velatha said, turning to face her companions.  The set of her mouth suggested that she was trying not to emphasize just how good the news was.

Iron Bull accomplished it for her.  “Great.  And we’re back to the ass-end of Demon Town,” he said gruffly.  His massive, serrated axe was already gripped tightly in both his hands.

Cole, meanwhile, was still shaking his head, his back to the Inquisitor.  His hands were balled into fists at his sides and he was moving them up and down, short, rigid little movements like to beating on drums.  He caught Velatha’s eye quickly, and she approached him.  “Cole, are you alright?” she asked gently, one of her hands falling lightly onto the back of his shoulder.

He darted out from beneath her touch immediately, his head shaking so furiously that his hat threatened to fly off his head.  “No.  No, no, no, no, no!  This place is wrong.  Dark and thin and tight...I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to go back, not like me,” he insisted, still not looking at anyone.

Varric and Anders exchanged looks; Anders looked confused, as nobody had given him the talk in regards to Cole, and Varric simply looked uneasy.  They didn’t need a nervous breakdown right now.

The Inquisitor, at least, had herself under control.  She took another step toward Cole, although no more than a step, and said, “It’s alright, Cole.  I know the last time we did this it was difficult for you.  I won’t make you come with us if you really don’t want to, but we could use your help.”

He shook his head again.  “Home and not home...real and not real...I don’t belong there, not anymore.  I can’t forget, won’t forget again.”

This time, the entire party exchanged looks.  They were all thinking along the same line:  the shit they were about to do was dangerous.  Someone should convince the kid to come help them, but no one believed it was their place to do so.  In the end, Velatha simply sighed and said, “Alright, Cole.  Stay here and help the soldiers contain the rift.”

Finally, Cole turned to face everyone again.  Through the fringes of his pale hair, he was clearly relieved.  “Thank you,” he breathed.

The Inquisitor nodded before she glanced toward the gathering soldiers.  “I suppose we should tell them we’re ready,” she remarked.

She’d nearly turned away from them all before Anders cleared his throat.  When she turned to face him, he seemed to steel himself before he said, “I suppose this is a good time to mention that I won’t be going with you, either.”

Not a moment passed before Velatha balked, “What?”

Iron Bull growled, “You’re shitting us.”

Varric added, “What was that?”

Anders let out a sharp exhale and glanced between the accusing faces that surrounded him.  “I said,” he repeated firmly, “I am staying here.  I fear what a journey to the Fade may bring out in me.”

“You remember that this whole thing was your idea, right?” the dwarf added, crossing his arms over his chest.  He couldn’t keep the accusation out of his tone; he knew exactly where this conversation was headed and where it would end up, but for all his concern about the man beside him, he couldn’t help but feel a bit put off that it had taken him this long to mention the fact that he had no intention of helping them recover Hawke.

Anders, for his part, seemed to struggle between wanting to backpedal out of the conversation and defend himself.  At length he opted for the latter and shot back, “Yes, I know it was my idea, and I stand by it.  This needs to be done, but it must be done without me.  Besides, I don’t see a mage among the soldiers.  They could use the support.”

“Or maybe you’re just scared your girlfriend’s dead,” Bull suggested, not particularly kindly.  When Varric and Velatha shot identical appalled looks at him, he added, “We were all thinking it.”

The qunari’s bluntness seemed to lend Anders strength, or at least enough anger to support himself.  “Trust me, that’s not it,” he said firmly.

“Then what is it?” Velatha practically implored him.  “This _was_ your idea, Anders, and it was dangerous enough when all of us were going.  With just three of us…”  She trailed away and shook her head, the veil of optimism she usually dangled in front of harsh realities nowhere to be seen.

The mage released a frustrated sigh and looked away from them all briefly.  Varric could see that he was struggling, but he could also see that he’d left his sympathy back in camp.  At length, Anders’ gaze returned to the Inquisitor and he admitted, “If I go into the Fade, I won’t...be _me_.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she pushed.

“In all likelihood, Justice will...possess me.  And that wouldn’t be good for anyone.”

“Varric, you wrote in your book that when you and Anders went into the Fade with Hawke─”

“It won’t be like that,” Anders interrupted quickly.

Velatha’s brows furrowed.  Hesitantly, she asked, “Then what would it be like?”

“I don’t know,” the mage admitted.  His words were heavy, as was the sigh that rushed through his nose.

“Blondie,” Varric interjected, “is there something you want to share with the group?”  It was growing more obvious by the second that Anders was hiding something, and that something was of critical importance.

Still, he turned an unappreciative expression on the dwarf.  “No, there isn’t.  My last journey into the Fade was a long time ago, and it wasn’t pleasant.  I don’t trust myself to repeat it, especially not here.  You’ll have enough to worry about.  You don’t need to be distracted by whatever might happen to me.”

“Anders, you can’t seriously─” the Inquisitor began, but he cut her off once again.

“I am serious,” he said, finality ringing through his words.  “I’m not going.  You’ll be fine without me.”

Anders' determination hung in the center of the tense silence, an elephant far too large for the room attempting to contain it. He and the Inquisitor stood staring at one another, his gaze hard, hers beseeching and, after it became clear that the other mage wouldn't relent, a bit resentful. The air between them turned cold, and after a moment she said, “We'll see."  

She turned to move off toward the gathering soldiers, and Iron Bull turned his back on Anders. “Coward," he said simply. A drop of venom soured the word, but for the most part he sounded as though he were simply stating a fact.

Varric was pissed, there could be no doubt about that, but he couldn't bring himself to go so far as to agree with Bull. He snuck a glance up at Anders and saw the fury glowing just beneath his tense exterior. If he knew the mage at all, and he felt he knew him too well, then he was confident that there was an excellent reason he refused to brave the Fade with them. Blondie was nothing if not way too committed; no way would he be sitting this out unless he felt he truly had no choice.

Still, no amount of understanding would make their situation any less shitty. “You should have said something earlier," Varric pointed out. Somehow he managed to blunt the harsh edge in his voice.

Anders still didn't appreciate the remark. “Good luck, Varric," he replied coldly. Without another word, he went to introduce himself to a few of the soldiers.

The dwarf heaved his own sigh and shook his head.  Briefly, he couldn’t help but wonder how many times Anders would let him down before he finally cut the cord for good.  Varric had never considered himself a particularly forgiving person, but he knew that once someone managed to get under his skin they usually didn’t see the light of day again.  It was a character flaw, and only one of the many reasons why he was never the hero of his stories.

The Captain and a small group of soldiers detached themselves from the ranks and began to follow the Inquisitor back toward the small dais.  “This is it, then,” Varric said.  He pulled Bianca over his shoulder and held her loosely in front of his chest, his finger absently stroking her trigger.

“Yeah,” Iron Bull agreed, the word low and rough.  “Try not to get left behind.  I don’t wanna do this again.”

_You may not have to_ , Varric thought.  Aloud, he said, “I’ll do my best.”

The Captain and his soldiers took up ready positions around the dais.  Cole left to find an opening of his own, and Anders stationed himself among the archers still on the floor.  Velatha moved to stand beside the greatsword sticking out of the stone, an inscrutable expression scrawled across her angular features.  “Everyone ready?” she asked.

Her companions returned grim nods, and she raised the anchor up to the sky.

The air above the dais began to shimmer and twist, and then far too familiar licks of emerald energy began to flare out from the Inquisitor’s hand.  Varric steadied himself and took a deep breath as he watched her make a fist and rip the Veil open, the sight of the bright green tear making him a little nauseous.  He didn’t waver, however, and when Velatha stepped into the void, he went right on her heels.


	9. Into the Fade, Part II:  The Raw Fade

Varric felt his skin crawl, each of the many hairs on his body wriggling like the legs of thousands of tiny centipedes.  The, unfortunately, familiar twisting landscape of the Fade loomed all around him.  Black rocky spires clawed at the sky, shredding the greenish wisps trailing sickly in the air.  Paths contorted at odd angles, and strange, indistinct shadows climbed over every surface, their casters nowhere to be seen.  As always, the Black City floated close on the horizon, all the more menacing for its indeterminable distance, or proximity.

It was silent, but the dwarf couldn’t escape the impression that some cacophony was sounding just out of earshot.

“Let’s look around,” Velatha said suddenly.  Varric’s eyes snapped onto her; she’d already walked several feet forward and he hadn’t even noticed.

He shook himself and began to follow after the Inquisitor, Bianca nestled snugly against the crook of his shoulder.  Memories of his last journey into the Fade began to return to him unbidden as he walked.  This place, this realm of dreams and nightmares and impossible possibilities was no place for him, and he hated the fact that it had become familiar.  On most levels he didn’t even like the fact that it _existed_.

 _That’s what you get for throwing in with mages_ , he reminded himself.  The whole situation, he thought, was not without a measure of irony.

That irony didn’t dissolve when he realized that they were standing in the very place they’d left Hawke to hold against the Nightmare.

“Well, that is...disgusting,” Iron Bull remarked as the trio crested the top of a small, rocky outcropping.

In the dark basin below were the remains of the Nightmare.  Its skeleton, although Varric was reluctant to call it such, was still mostly intact and the most easily recognizable piece of the creature.  Several of its bones still held up the general shape of the carcass, although they were unlike any bones the dwarf had ever seen.  They looked as though they weren’t bones themselves, but rather the result of fusing hundreds of bones, of varying shapes and sizes, together.  Knobbed spurs jutted out from thick, crooked white arches, and malformed, half-sunken skulls stared out from several places amid the mangled remains.  Flesh still clung to it in the places where the bones met, thick, pink tendons hanging between them like rotting, grotesque birthday streamers.

Varric opened his mouth to say something, but the words fled his tongue.

After several unbearably long moments, Iron Bull said, “I thought demons didn’t rot in the Fade.  I thought they just kind of...disappeared.”

“They do,” Velatha answered.  She seemed almost dazed.  “This must have been something else.”

“Well, it’s dead,” Bull went on, completely unfazed.  “Maybe Hawke survived after all.”

“We should keep looking,” the Inquisitor quickly pushed.  She turned her back on the scene and began to negotiate a way back down and around the rocky bluff.

Iron Bull, however, wasn’t finished with his round of questions.  “Hey, Boss?” he inquired as he picked his way after her.  Varric chose to take up the rear.

“Yeah?” Velatha answered.

“So, if the Champion’s alive, is it possible that she just...I don’t know, wandered off?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t stay here.”

“She probably went as far as she could, but she can’t _get away_ if I understand you correctly,” the Inquisitor answered, breathing a small sigh of relief when they reached relatively flat ground again.

“How’s that?” Bull asked.

“The same reason why we had to enter the Fade at Adamant.  The Fade is a very loose reflection of the physical world,” she explained.  She almost sounded relaxed, save for the fact that her gaze was ever darting all around her.  “When someone enters it in a dream, they can only explore so much.  Eventually they’ll have to dream somewhere else to see anything new.”

“I see,” the qunari said.  A moment passed, and he added, “Except, we’re not dreaming, and neither was she.”

The Inquisitor had no response, and silence fell between the companions.  Varric didn’t want to consider the implications of Bull’s observation.  The idea of being physically lost in the Fade forever was just too much for him to successfully handle, so he told himself, as firmly as possible, that everything was going to be okay.  After all, he’d done this once before and lived, not to mention the rest of the crazy shit he’d made it through.   _This_ , he hoped, would not be the end of his tale.

Still, after a few more minutes, the silence electric with nerves, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer.  “So, Inquisitor,” he began, as smoothly as he could, “how exactly are we supposed to find Hawke?  We can’t just wander around until we stumble across her...can we?”

Velatha glanced over her shoulder briefly before immediately turning her eyes back to the path in front of her.  “No, we can’t,” she answered.  “Since we don’t have another Divine to guide us, we’re on our own this time.  Usually the Fade assumes form according to the mind of the dreamer, but this is the raw Fade so it’s less...malleable.  It is still the Fade, though, so I think the basic rules might still apply.  If we concentrate only on finding Hawke, the path should lead us to her eventually.”

Varric knew he should have liked that answer, but he didn’t.  “That sounds a little too easy,” he pointed out.

The Inquisitor rolled her staff in her hand.  “Trust me.  It won’t be easy.”

Almost on cue, a sickening, wet clacking sound began to fill the air.  The three looked all around, searching for the source of the noise, but their surroundings remained unchanged.  The clacking and squishing continued to grow louder in their ears; the sound came from every direction at once, pressing in on them until they stood with their backs together, weapons held at the ready in front of them, eyes bulging and straining in the dim light.

“Spiders!” the Inquisitor shouted suddenly, her raw voice making Varric jump and swing Bianca around to bear.  He pulled her trigger instinctively and, somehow, the bolt found its mark.  It buried itself in the pinching maw of one of the advancing creatures, black ichor spraying in all directions as it fell forward and tumbled over itself.  Its black, swollen abdomen bounced grotesquely when it hit the ground, its legs twitching feebly before they curled up on themselves.

Iron Bull’s war cry tore the dwarf’s eyes away from his kill.  The qunari charged the rest of the advancing pack of spiders, axe held over his shoulder, small rocks kicked up in the wake of his heavy footfalls.  He swung, and half of a cleaved spider went flying over the rest of the horde.

That was the extent of Varric’s hesitation.  The Fade and its tricks made him nervous, but this he knew how to handle.  With effort, he blocked out his surroundings as much as he could and focused on the enemy currently trying, and failing, to swarm the raging cyclone of death-by-qunari ripping through its ranks.  He trotted into a flanking position with a better view of Bull’s blind spot and focused there, putting a bolt into every monster that attempted to approach from behind.  

The Inquisitor controlled the flow of the battle, ringing her friends and their immediate foes in a cage of lightning to stem the tide, random white bolts smiting the beasts she didn’t strike down personally.  Arcs of electricity soon filled the whole area, the stench of burning spider thickening in the air.  Any creatures who tried to get close to Varric found themselves either wracked by repeated barrages of lightning or paralyzed and awaiting a bolt from Bianca.

In all, the fight only lasted for a few minutes before Iron Bull put his axe through the abdomen of the last spider, its life ending in a series of pitiful cries and spasms.  He planted a foot on the thing’s carapace for leverage before he ripped the weapon free, black goo splattering across his chest and over the slick ground.  He was already covered in the stuff, so he didn’t bother attempting to wipe the weapon down before he turned to the other two.  “Ugh.  I hate those things,” he grumbled, aiming a passing kick at one of the corpses as he rejoined his friends.

“You would think that with the Nightmare gone, they wouldn’t be here anymore,” Varric observed, taking the free moment to reload Bianca.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” the Inquisitor agreed.  A moment passed before she added, “Unless something just as horrible took its place.”

“I don’t want to think about that,” the dwarf retorted quickly.  “Let’s just keep moving.”

Velatha nodded and turned to continue leading the way.  Varric, for his part, tried exceedingly hard to forget the point she’d just brought up, only it wasn’t working.  The last time he was here, he remembered Solas mentioning that the Nightmare demon _ruled_ this part of the Fade.  If that was true, then its death evidently left some kind of vacancy.  If the vacancy was filled, that meant that whatever _thing_ was now in charge could send minions out to hunt them down, just like the Nightmare had.

It could send out minions to hunt down Hawke.

It probably already had.


	10. Into the Fade, Part III:  The Illusion

Anders stood at the end of the line of archers, his knuckles white around his staff, his dark eyes boring a hole into the tear in the Veil.  It had been almost an hour since the Inquisitor, Varric, and Iron Bull had gone into the Fade, and not a single thing had come through the rift.  Some of the soldiers were beginning to speculate about their fortune, but he wasn’t convinced that it was luck so much as the quiet before the storm.

Another few minutes slipped by, and he felt himself growing restless.  He broke away from the rest of the soldiers and circled the rift, coming to a halt about a quarter of the way around it.  

From here, he had a view of all the men wrapped around the edges of the hall.  Some continued to eye the rift with suspicion, their nerves laid bare in their rigid stances, hands gripping the hilts of swords or arrows twirling rapidly between unusually clumsy fingers.  Some paid the rift no more attention and held up lively conversations with their brothers in arms, avidly voicing their conviction that this “Fade business” isn’t half as dangerous as everybody says it is.  The more seasoned soldiers were easy to spot among the rest; they were the ones waiting patiently, their eyes trained on the rift and the recruits in equal measure.

The atmosphere wasn’t so tense now that it had been quiet for so long.  Anders probably should have been glad for it, but instead, all he could do was wish that something, _anything_ would happen.  He wanted the din of battle to fill his ears and the familiar thrum of magic to crackle at his fingertips, and more than anything he wanted to put an end to something.  He wanted to watch the life drain from the eyes of one of the creatures that had taken his beloved away.  He wanted to rip the demons that had stolen her limb from limb, feel their blood splash hot across his face and listen to their agonized cries drown out the Song in his head.

Fire tore through the mage’s veins without warning, driving a low, strangled snarl from the back of his throat and causing his muscles to seize visibly.  Cracks flashed over his skin, wisps of black energy obscuring the sharp lines and thickening the air around him.  The Song grew louder, and with it, the rage burned brighter than it ever had before.

Sweat broke out over Anders’ forehead and the muscles in his neck strained and bulged.  He used his staff as a crutch, driving the end into a furrow between the stones to keep himself upright.  The fire in his veins surged violently.  The darkness beginning to surround him pulsed and twisted.

With an extraordinary surge of willpower he managed to push it all back, to drive it down below the surface again.  The shadows fell away and the cracks melted into his skin, leaving in their wake a man who looked like he could use a bed far more than a battle.  The absence of the fire left his knees weak and a little wobbly, and the exertion drained what little color was left from his face.  Small strands of blonde hair stuck to the sweat coating his forehead and the sides of his neck.

Once he caught his breath, Anders directed his gaze around the hall.  Nobody seemed to notice his outburst, brief and quiet as it was, and for that he was thankful.  Still, his eyes swept the line of men to make sure that none were on the verge of pointing him out, and it was then that he spotted Cole for the first time since he’d disappeared into the sparse ranks of soldiers.

The boy sat crosslegged on the ground, picking at piles of pebbles he’d constructed during the wait.  His hands were poised above a small divot in the stone, tiny rocks held in each of them, and a long moment passed before Anders realized that he wasn’t moving.  He sat, as still as any statue, staring at the mage.  His eyes were obscured by the fringes of his pale hair, but there could be no mistake about the direction of his gaze.  He had seen everything.

Anders froze under the boy’s scrutiny, the sweat growing cold on his skin.  He’d done a better job than he’d thought possible of keeping his little problem under wraps throughout the journey; breathing exercises and learning how to wake up from nightmares quietly went a long way when one was intent on keeping secrets.  Now, however, this kid had gotten an eyeful that would be more than enough to earn him a turn under the axe, especially if the mission to recover Hawke went sour.  Suddenly his illusion of control felt much thinner than it had a few moments ago.

The mage couldn’t pretend to understand Cole’s powers or how he knew about the burning, but he also knew that he couldn’t approach him or try to explain.  He wasn’t ready to explain this to anyone yet, and he doubted the kid would let him get anywhere near him anyway.  The Inquisitor and her friends didn’t know it, but that boy was probably the smartest out of all of them.

A long, shaky breath escaped Anders’ lungs.  He was sure that what he was thinking was stupid, but he was desperate to hold onto his secret for just a little while longer.  Just until the rest of them returned from the Fade.

He focused all of his concentration on Cole and very determinedly thought, _Please don’t be afraid.  I’m trying._

A measure of desperation crept into Anders’ face as the two stared at one another, and then Cole went back to piling pebbles into the hole in the ground.

 


	11. Into the Fade, Part IV:  Dead in Darktown

“This was definitely not here before,” the Inquisitor said, her voice soft with awe and confusion.

The three friends stood on one side of a set of heavy doors, twice as tall and three times as wide as the main doors of Skyhold.  They were carved from some material blacker than the night itself and reflected every particle of light so vividly that their brilliance was completely dazzling.  Or, it would have been if not for the twisted, grotesque shapes illuminated across the stone slabs.  Varric squinted, but he couldn’t identify exactly what he was looking at no matter how hard he tried.  The pictures were indescribable, but they instilled within him a distinct sense of loathing and despair.

“We’re not going in there, are we?” he couldn’t help asking.

Iron Bull shifted his weight between his feet.  “I’m with Varric on this one, Boss,” he said, his own voice equally discomfited.

Velatha seemed not to have heard them.  She leaned a little closer to the doors and carefully laid one of her hands over the crack between them.  A horrible groan rose up and filled the air, causing her to jump and leap backward, nearly bowling the dwarf over in the process.  He got his hands up at the last moment and caught her around the waist, half stumbling himself as the two heavy doors slowly swung inward.

After what seemed like a very long time, the doors ground to a halt and the deafening noise died away.

“Oops,” the elf squeaked.

Varric let out an exasperated sigh.  He released the Inquisitor and reached up to pat her on the shoulder all the same; it wasn’t her fault that she was so damn curious about everything.  Well, maybe it was, but they were in no position to go around pointing fingers.  Instead, he focused on the far more important aspect of their situation and pointed out, “Maker’s breath, what is this?”

What laid beyond the giant, ugly doors was no infinite stretch of the raw Fade like he had been expecting.  It would have been so much easier if it were just more wet rocks and green mist and terrifying demons trying to eat his face off.  It would have been so much easier if the vengeful spirit of Knight-Commander Meredith were standing before him and waving a cat-o’-nine-tails made out of asps.  It would have been so much easier if it were Corypheus popping by to say hello all over again.

It would have been so much easier if it were literally anything else.

Varric rushed headlong into the room without a second thought, all other purpose driven from his mind as he desperately called, “Bianca?”

The form he addressed laid prostrate on the ground, her figure twitching from head to toe.  The cowl of her tunic formed a crumpled halo around her braided blonde head, a meager pillow against the dirty floor of the Darktown alley.  Her fingers scrabbled clumsily at the arrow protruding from her abdomen, skewering her to the crimson flower blooming steadily over the stone.  She gave no indication that she’d heard the other dwarf’s call.

Her silence only sent Varric to her side all the quicker.  In the distance, something ground to a resounding halt.  He dropped to his knees in the pool of blood and his hands went immediately to the wound.  He pressed down against the flesh around the arrow, wincing when Bianca cried out in agony although he held his position.  Within seconds his skin was slick and red, his heart thundering in his chest.

Wild eyes bulging, his gaze darted between the wound and Bianca’s wet, brown orbs.  “Bianca, what─what happened?  How did you─  What are you─?” he stammered, unable to tell whether he was whispering or shouting at the top of his lungs.

Suddenly Bianca’s eyes fixed onto his.  She unclenched her jaw, opened her mouth to speak, but rather than words a bright bubble of blood popped over her lips.

“Damn it!” Varric cursed quickly.  He felt Bianca shudder beneath his hands, the uncontrollable movement pushing and pulling him between a thousand emotions, each competing for his attention.  For a brief moment, it was all he could do to look down at her and wish there was a way to be comforting, furious, and scared out of his mind all at once.

For the first time since he spotted her beyond those great, black doors, Varric forced himself to look at the arrow protruding from Bianca’s stomach.  Not the wound itself, but the weapon that had inflicted it.  It wasn’t a crossbow bolt, but rather a light, smooth arrow with dark grey fletching.  A thin, silver chain hung from the nock, a familiar, intricate pendant the size of a sovereign clinking lightly against the shaft.

“Damn it,” he cursed again.

He looked back to Bianca before he threw his eyes over his shoulder and called desperately to his friends, “It was the Merchants’ Guild!  Do we have any bandages?  Velatha, you’ve healed these types of wounds before, right?  Can you do something?”

The Inquisitor didn’t look half as worried as Varric thought she ought to.  Instead, she seemed...sad.  Sympathy swam in the depths of her pale green eyes as she shook her head.  After a moment’s hesitation, she began, “Varric─”

The kind of rage Varric often described in his books but that he had never experienced personally exploded in his belly like fire from the maw of a Ferelden Frostback.  “ _What?!_ ” he shouted suddenly, bolts of spittle flying from his lips.  “Why are you just standing there?!  Both of you, get over here and help me!”

Iron Bull and the Inquisitor looked at one another.  Some unspoken truth passed between them that only pissed Varric off even further.  He held his tongue only because the expressions of each were tinged with an obvious discomfort, the kind people adopted when they were forced to deliver terrible news to strangers.  A long moment passed before the qunari broke the Inquisitor’s gaze and ran a hand over his ashen face.

Varric felt Bianca shudder again.  A heartbreaking gurgle passed through her trembling lips as a tiny river of blood began to run down her cheek.  Her hands grasped at his with less and less strength.

“Would you two knock it the hell off and _help me?!_ ” he shouted again, leaning more weight onto his arms.  His desperation echoed around the alley, in his ears.

Velatha looked at Varric, and she seemed to steel herself.  Adamantly, although her voice shook, she told him, “Varric, that is not Bianca.”

“What?” he blurted.  He shook his head and looked away, back to the woman bleeding out right in front of him.  Their eyes met, cold fear in hers, a desperate plea in his.  “It’s _her_.  She’s right here, and she needs our help!”

“No,” Velatha continued quickly.  Varric felt a very violent argument working its way up his throat, but she cut him off.  “We’re in the Fade, Varric.  It _can’t_ be her.”

“Then how can─” he began to retort loudly.

Bianca suddenly seized his wrist, her strength startling the words from his lips.  She picked her head up off the ground, neck muscles straining, and croaked, “Varric─”  She sounded as though she were drowning.

Her voice tore at his heart, but Varric found himself pulling up short at the intensity of her frenzied gaze.  Her eyes flashed sharp and clear, and her grip around his wrist held fast.  With so much of her blood creeping across the stone, it should have been nearly impossible for her to remain conscious, let alone hold a healthy dwarf so firmly in place.

Doubt began to well up in Varric’s mind.  He glanced back at his friends, and he guessed that his uncertainty was written all over his face because Velatha immediately stepped forward and began to reach out toward him.  It was a calm albeit quick motion; however, her controlled movement dissolved into a desperate lunge before his very eyes.

A wall of ice roared up from the ground and threw the Inquisitor backward.  Her surprised squeal reverberated off the walls of the alley, the sound chilling Varric far deeper than the sudden, cold burn that erupted everywhere Bianca touched him.

He forced himself to turn back to her, and as soon as he did he understood why Velatha sought to get to him.  She was right; this was _not_ Bianca.  It was her, but it wasn’t.  She was thinner somehow, less corporeal, and whatever lived inside her was beginning to show through.

Varric had gone toe to toe with evil plenty of times in his life, but never had he been so close to it.

“Varric,” Bianca hissed.  Her grip tightened as she used her hold on him to haul herself to a sitting position.  She leaned into him, and he could smell her sour breath as she continued, “It’s me, Varric.  I need you.  I need your help.”

Even as she spoke, the illusion became less and less convincing.  Her voice grew distorted, low and raspy, and something threatening peered through her dark eyes.

Varric felt the fear coiling in his belly, felt it begin to edge up his spine.  Before it could make it all the way, he clenched his chiseled jaw and growled, “You’ll pay for this.”

Bianca’s face split into a wide grin, all teeth and malice.  Varric shook his elbow, felt the cool blade of a small dagger slide along his forearm, and deftly pushed it into the creature in the same place the arrow had been only moments before.

It shrieked, high and loud and horrible.  Its claw came away from Varric’s wrist as it reached to pull out the dagger, and he used the opportunity to throw himself as far into the ice wall at his back as possible.  His hands flew to Bianca’s stock, but even as he pulled her over his shoulder the creature dropped the little knife to the ground.  It righted itself, put its feet underneath it and poised to strike.

A violent crack split the air.  A bolt of white lightning struck the figure, shattering what was left of the illusion and leaving it paralyzed.  Varric wasted no time; he yanked Bianca out in front of him and scrambled to his feet.  Iron Bull vaulted over the ice and threw himself between the demon and dwarf just as the former regained control of itself, giving the latter the opportunity to get some distance.

Varric rolled to the side, and by the time he came up on his feet again the robed demon had retreated to the other side of the alley.  Bull chased after it, axe lofted, and the Inquisitor slung bolt after bolt of electricity at it until the hair on the backs of their necks began to stand on end.  The two could have finished the thing off in minutes, he was sure, but as soon as he got a proper look at the monstrous thing that had worn the face of the love of his life, he knew that this wasn’t their fight.

His knuckles whitened around Bianca’s grip, and his finger slid easily over her trigger.  It gave way readily at his touch, the crossbow itself eager to take a bite out of the demon brave enough to mock her namesake.  Bolt after bolt whistled across the room, deftly finding a mark around the qunari’s bulk.  Varric walked their trajectory, and with each step he grew more confident; with each bolt’s wet thud his satisfaction increased.

He was never much for close quarters combat, but by the time he finished his advance, Iron Bull and the Inquisitor had long since ceased their attacks and the demon had long since melted away, scraps of its black robe pinned to the rock in its place.  Only then did he lower Bianca and begin to let the anger go, the heat carried away on a long, low sigh.

A moment passed, and then the Inquisitor began, “Varric─”

He held a hand up to silence her and quickly said, “Let’s...not.  Let’s just...keep moving.”

Quiet settled again over the trio, cool and weighty.  Varric almost felt guilty, cutting Velatha off like that when he knew that she had only been about to ask if he was alright.  Throughout the course of their adventures, after all they had been through together, he had come to love her like his own flesh and blood.  Well, perhaps not quite like that, but he cared for her a great deal.  She didn’t deserve his cold shoulder, but this was not something that he would, that he _could_ , discuss.  He didn’t enjoy giving people glimpses of his personal life, and Bianca was as personal as it got.  Not even Hawke knew about their relationship beyond the fact that she was his crossbow’s namesake and once in a while letters addressed to her appeared on the dwarf’s desk.  Letting anyone know just how vulnerable he became in regard to her turned his stomach.

Put simply there were no words for the gratitude he felt when Bull awkwardly declared, “Yeah, well...Looks like the doors shut behind us.  Guess we go forward.”

 

 


	12. Into the Fade, Part V: Demands of the Qun

The light sweat that coated Anders’ skin had long since dried, and an unfriendly chill took its place.  The cool desert winds cut into him beneath the thick layers he wore, whistled in his ears and whipped at his hair.  He focused all of his energy on the wind and the cold, let it fill him up, let it creep into his bones and rattle them like Avaar spears on the edge of night.

A heaviness settled in the pit of his stomach a little while after his outburst.  It held him in place because he knew what it meant, although he did his best to ignore it.  He didn’t want to, but he needed to.  If he acknowledged that feeling, that gut instinct he was so familiar with, it would carry him to the brink all over again.

The storm was coming soon.  He didn’t know how he would control himself once it hit, and the last thing he needed was to find himself without solid ground when that moment came.

For the hundredth time since the Inquisitor and her friends went into the Fade (since he sent them into the Fade, really), his eyes swept the breadth of the open hall.  He saw nothing new.  Everything was as it had been, and briefly he had to wonder whether anyone else could feel what he felt.

Movement caught his attention, and he shifted his gaze in time to see Cole rise swiftly to his feet.  In the blink of an eye, his wicked daggers glinted in his hands.  The brim of his hat concealed the upper portion of his face, but Anders imagined that his eyes were trained on the rift.

Something strange rippled through the hall, something intangible, something that crackled and sparked on the edge of his tongue and under his fingernails.  Silence, swift and suffocating, blanketed not just the fortress but the entire Approach.  The wind died against Anders’ back, broke around him like violent waves against an unyielding shore.

For the space of a heartbeat, everything was calm.

And then the first of the horde broke through.

* * *

Soft ground suddenly enveloped the sole of Iron Bull’s boot.  The immediate give beneath his considerable weight halted him in his tracks, and he realized that he was no longer standing in the dusty Kirkwall alley the party had been traveling through only moments before.  Their surroundings were now, for the most part, dark; early stars hung in the azure sky overhead, barely visible through the dense, dark canopy.  Trees, tall and thick, rose proudly out of the earth.  Their wide roots tangled through one another above the ground; at first glance the arrangement seemed random, natural, but Bull could spot a clear path through the bark and the exotic foliage.  When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that the forest ahead of them had replaced the alley behind as well.

A disdainful growl passed his lips, a muted vocalization of the recognition passing through his mind.  “I know this place,” he said suspiciously.  Tentatively he continued forward.

The Inquisitor, who had been hovering uncertainly between Bull’s side and a position just ahead of Varric (who wordlessly insisted upon taking up the rear), finally stopped her awkward maneuvers and appeared at the qunari’s elbow.  “You do?” she asked, eyes trained intently up at his face.

He nodded.  “Par Vollen.  Southern reach, east of Qunandar,” he answered, without emotion.

The Inquisitor was silent for a long moment, and then quietly she began, “Then this means that─”

“Some asshole demons are probably gonna make a pass at me?  Yeah, I know,” Bull finished for her.

She didn’t press the conversation.

The qunari had no way of knowing what lie ahead of them, but he was not anxious to discover it, whatever it was.  It seemed that they were running some type of gauntlet; if Varric was forced to endure something which caused him immeasurable pain and then moments later the scenery changed to a place of particular importance to Bull, he could only assume that something similar was about to happen to him and, after him, the Inquisitor.  The thought made him uneasy, and angry, but more than anything, beneath the set of his carefully blank and slightly disdainful features, he was anxious to see what this strange and evil place planned to twist against him.

He felt himself growing distracted as he sifted through his memories, attempting to predict what he would encounter so as to feel more prepared, so he reminded himself firmly of what the Inquisitor told them upon their arrival:   _“If we concentrate only on finding Hawke, the path should lead us to her eventually.”_

Hawke was what he was here for, regardless of what he must face in the process, and he would not let himself be led astray.

As he wound through the forest path, he found it grew more and more familiar the deeper they ventured.  He tried to push the memories away, to keep his goal in the forefront of his mind.  It worked at first, but even one as disciplined as he was subject to the comfort of nostalgia and the thin, cruel blade of memory.

As the sight of the crumbling, overgrown stone ruins began to peek through the trees, he knew which would greet him.

Briefly he was tempted to utter a warning, or perhaps a threat, to his friends, but he held his tongue.  He didn’t know what they were about to see, but whatever it was, he decided it was best that he end the show before it began.  The edge of the clearing ahead of the ruined tower approached, and he drew his axe.

Almost the moment they broke through the treeline, a small band of qunari, each of their faces perfectly familiar, began to exit through the intact, doorless archway that led to the dark interior of the tower.  They came by twos, side by side, and formed a semicircle around the party.

The two warriors in the middle of the curved line slid away from one another, and the last warrior emerged from the darkness to take his place between them.

Iron Bull’s large fingers tightened around the haft of his axe.  “Arvaarad,” he half growled beneath his breath.

The qunari he addressed, a hulking beast of a creature with a complex, oil black pattern of vitaar painted across his entire torso, arms, forehead, and short beard, let a condescending smirk cross his thick lips.  “Tal-Vashoth,” he answered, slowly, as if he were savoring each syllable as it dropped from his tongue.  The words coiled in the air in front of him, as slow and slick as a snake.

Another low growl resounded in the back of Bull’s throat.  His hands twisted on his axe, and he planted one foot firmly into the ground in preparation for his charge.

The corner of Arvaarad’s lips curled upward into a sharp edged smile.  That single expression set a flood of memories loose in Bull’s mind.  He remembered Arvaarad, already confident and comfortable in his role when Bull was just a boy, a mischievous little rascal several years away from his appointment to the Ben-Hassrath.  He remembered Arvaarad, his Saarebas, Bull’s closest friend in early childhood, chained and dragged behind him, the collared mage’s head bowed, horns blunted and chest bruised from his needless abuse.  He remembered Arvaarad, the identical, condescending grin he wore as he commanded Saarebas, accidentally separated from his keeper in the aftermath of a skirmish with Tal-Vashoth, to submit to the will of the Qun.

Iron Bull recognized the demon for what it was.  Arvaarad had taken delight in his treatment of Saarebas, and delight in the torment his fate brought Bull, the lone qunari brave enough to openly accuse him of his abuses.  He knew that it was not truly Arvaarad who stood before him, but the pain he felt at his recollection and the pleasure at this veiled opportunity for revenge were very real.

As his battle cry tore past his lips, as his raised axe glinted in the starlight and his booted feet thundered across the soft clearing, it did not occur to Bull that perhaps he was getting off too easily.  Perhaps it was not with Arvaarad that the demon intended to torture him.

Bull released his swing, the blade of his axe whistling toward Arvaarad’s neck, but the weapon passed through empty air.  The warrior appeared on the opposite side of the clearing, behind the entire party; Bull could not see him, but he heard the charge of a binding rod crash through the air.

In the instant it took the sound to pass, Bull’s resolve shattered.

With the release of the device, the inside of the tower beyond the yawning arch before him exploded into light.  The shadows disappeared, banished by a pale, bluish, electrical light, the sort that the Inquisitor’s staff cast when she used it to illuminate objects in the dark.  Iron Bull’s eyes needed several moments to adjust to its brightness, and when they did, he felt his strong stomach drop into the earth beneath his feet.

The source of the light revealed itself as the sharp luminescence receded into a soft glow, emitted by the ashen flesh of a female qunari, kneeling in the center of the ruins.  Slowly and deliberately, she raised one knee to plant one foot upon the ground, then the other, before she lifted her palms and straightened her shoulders.  

Even by the giant race’s standards, this woman was tall.  She stood a mere couple of inches shorter than Iron Bull himself, and her stance, heavy as it was, remained proud and powerful, almost Amazonian in presence.  She wore little in the way of clothing.  Her breasts were covered by a simple black brazier, the hardened leather armor sculpted to resemble the scales of a high dragon, six lengths of black silk wrapping around her neck and ribs to secure it in a complex knot between her shoulder blades.  Lean muscle sculpted a perfect, naked hourglass waist.  A wide leather belt, matching the brazier, wrapped around her hips and closed in an unadorned silver clasp.  Small silver discs, tied together to continue to provide the illusion of dragon scales, hung in strips of staggered length from the front and back segments of the belt; they swayed slightly with her natural, imperceptible movements, clinking gently and offering brief, fleeting peeks at the pale flesh of her powerful thighs.  Two similarly constructed panels of black leather hung from either side of the belt, between the mail.

Impossibly pale blue eyes glinted above sculpted cheekbones and full, luscious lips, forever sealed by the thick, black cord stitching them together.  Waist length stark white hair dangled freely over the curve of her back and the heavy collar chained around her body.  Her once impressive horns were severed at her temples, the cuts jagged and clumsy.

Suddenly the tension went out of Iron Bull’s shoulders, and his axe dropped a little.  Cold fear bit into his heart, and all notions of the truth of the creature before him fled his mind.

“Kadan?” he muttered, the small word as much a denial as it was a painful observation.

A moment passed, and then a low, wet gurgle sounded in the woman’s throat.  Her elegant hands twisted to form palm-up claws at either side of her hips, and white balls of raw electricity crackled into life between the points of her curled fingers.

“Bull?” called a small voice at his back, from somewhere very far away.

He only barely managed to dive to the side and out of the way of the blast of lightning the woman loosed at him.  This was one fight for which the Iron Bull was neither eager nor prepared.

Another crack of electricity split the air, although this time it wasn’t directed at him.   _“BULL!”_ shouted the same small voice, only now it was much larger.

The force of the Inquisitor’s call managed to snap the qunari out of his shocked daze in time to get his axe up in front of his chest, wicked claws quickly withdrawing from its threatening edge.  The warriors ringing the party had transformed, closed in and begun attacking from all sides.  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Velatha and Varric fighting literally back to back, the dwarf’s shoulders pressed against her as he parried with his crossbow and she swung her spirit blade in wide arcs before her; they were both clearly on the defensive, focused on keeping the demons at bay rather than eliminating them.

The sight of his friends outnumbered and surrounded immediately lit a fire inside Bull, and that fire was just what he needed to fight off the cold grief that had seized his heart.  Rage, kindled in the heat of combat, boiled through his blood, and he threw himself at the demon before him.  It howled as he closed the inches and swung his axe over his head, tried to dodge the blow as it fell, but the axe bit deeply into its shoulder.  The blade hungrily ripped a diagonal path through the creature’s body and exited just below the opposite side of its rib cage.

Bull’s dark eye, wild and bulging, swiveled to where his friends still stood ringed in by the other demons.  In any other fight, he would have targeted the mage first (it was practically the first rule of battle when magic entered the field), but today he told himself that Velatha and Varric were the most pressing concern.  Help them, and then he would see about his Kadan, or whatever creature wore her skin.

His foot drove into the soft ground and sent him hurtling straight for the line of demons, their black, curving backs to him, their claws swiping relentlessly at the two trapped before them.  In a matter of seconds Bull crashed through the line, using the flat side of the axe to literally bat one of the creatures into its neighbor before he swung upward for the real strike.  The demon’s upper body was cleaved in two from the sternum upward, and it disappeared in a small, wet explosion.

Confusion immediately ensued as most of the demons scrambled away from Velatha and Varric to target Bull instead, and the qunari, beginning to enjoy the fight a little, flashed a grin at his friends and jerked his head toward the far side of the clearing.  The Inquisitor went in one direction, the dwarf in another until they could both do what they did best from a safe distance.  Bull, meanwhile, did what he did best:  unleashed wanton destruction in every direction.

Until an explosive ball of electricity hit him squarely in the back.  His axe flew from his hand as his limbs were jerked straight out by the current surging through his muscles, making them impossibly tight and rigid.  His blood was no longer blood but raw pain, circulating through his system as the stench of charred flesh began to fill the air.  After what seemed like hours, the spell ended, and with numb limbs he dropped in a heap upon the ground, smoke curling from the muscled dome of his bent shoulders.

Consciousness became a difficult thing to grasp, but Bull held on with all his strength anyway.  The ground, the most immediate thing in his field of vision, swam and twisted dizzyingly.  The edges of the world grew dark, and then the whole world as he blinked several times in an attempt to steady his brain; it didn’t work.  Thoughts ghosted through his fingers, tiny fragments of things he was aware of (the Inquisitor yelling something, the heavy draws and thuds of Bianca’s repeating mechanism, the tingle of electricity beneath his scalp), but he could not bring himself to close on one of them long enough give it substance.

And then, all at once, the world was forced back upon him.

A hard pain spread outward from the focal point in the crook of his shoulder, and it wasn’t until he opened his eye again that he realized what had happened to bring him so suddenly and harshly back to full awareness.  The Inquisitor, her tiny toes and skinny ankles visible directly in front of him, had kicked him with her bare foot with more force than he thought her whole body capable of.

He pushed his shoulder into the ground in order to gain a little leverage, and as soon as she saw him stir, she kicked him again and shouted, “Get up!   _Get!  Up!_ ”

With effort, Bull began to drag himself to his feet.  As he did so, he saw the Inquisitor dispatch the final two demons; two, where moments before Bull had gone down there had been at least six remaining.  He was impressed enough that he managed to stand a little quicker.

The fighting was not yet done, however.  Varric lay unconscious across the clearing (when he had collapsed Bull had no idea), and the mage still stood beneath the arch of the crumbling ruins.  A long moment passed before he realized that she wasn’t moving.

He looked to the Inquisitor, her small, angular face pinched and pink with concentration and the rush of a difficult battle.  She held her staff horizontally, at arms’ length in front of her chest, with both hands.  Tiny blue bolts of electricity sparked along its entire shaft and up to her elbows, and it seemed difficult for her to keep hold of the thing.

As soon as she realized that he was staring at her and not moving an inch, her green eyes darted up to him and flashed.   _“I can’t hold her forever!”_ she said, through clenched teeth.

Bull’s heart contracted painfully in his chest as he redirected his gaze to the mage, the Saarebas.  She was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, even chained and mutilated as she was.  It hurt to see her this way, defiled and twisted to serve the savage nature of the Qun, only savage when it demanded so brutal a treatment toward one so indisputably good as she.

But, he reminded himself, now that his head had cleared somewhat, this was not she.  They were in the Fade, and qunari mages, even those as yet undiscovered, did not enter the Fade.  

Even as Bull bent to retrieve his axe, his eye fixed upon the lone enemy left standing, he could see the robed, vile thing beneath her skin begin to show through.  He’d known it all along, deep down, but the true sight of such an unholy thing masquerading as something so dear to him infuriated him in a way that he had not thought possible.

His fists tightened around the axe, and he charged.

Several moments and blind swings later, and the trio stood victorious in the forgotten clearing.

Bull lowered his axe, let its head fall and rest upon the ground.  His chest expanded and contracted as he pulled air into his lungs, pushed it back out again.  He knew that what had just happened wasn’t real; he’d only killed a demon, not the woman it had pretended to be.  And yet, a tiny corner of his heart mourned for her anyway.

He stood still as he listened to the Inquisitor run to Varric behind his back.  He heard the grass shift as she rolled the dwarf over, heard fabric swish and rustle as she checked him for injuries.  Little clinks, glass flasks bumping into one another, floated back to him just before an uncomfortable sputter, a groan, and a long sigh.  Varric would be fine.

Once everyone was back on their feet, he swallowed hard and buried the pang in his chest.  With an easy expression (that could have looked a little less forced), he turned back to his friends.  “Time to move on,” he said simply, although he couldn’t quite tell whether the words were meant as a statement or a question.

The Inquisitor offered him a weak smile, her understanding plain nevertheless, and nodded.

As the three ventured deeper into the gnarled forest, Bull took his turn at the rear.


	13. Into the Fade, Part VI: Wrath

A dozen soldiers lay dead already, their limbs torn from their bodies, their blood sprayed across the faces of their compatriots.

Most in the hall had expected a fight that day, but none expected the war currently raging within the confines of Adamant’s main hall.  Scores of demons filled the spaces between the soldiers, their twisted shapes bending and shifting in ways that made eyes sore to see them.  Their claws raked shields, rent skin, tore unfulfilled lives from young bodies. Their howls rose high on the winds, a maelstrom of unnatural cries and shrieks that viciously buffeted the ears and the soul.

Anders stood in the thick of the battle, a ring of demon corpses piled knee-high around him; they couldn’t melt away quickly enough to make room for the freshly dead, and so the low, grotesque wall continued to rise.  The mage himself was nearly unrecognizable, the blood of his enemies and the occasional fallen ally coated his face and armor so thickly.  It dripped from his arms when he swung his staff, flew from his hair each time he turned his head.

A storm of the raw elements themselves tore at the demons that approached him.  Fire licked at their flesh only to be chased away by a bitter, burning cold, or the sting of lightning, or a barrage of cruel, heavy boulders.  He remained unscathed, having found himself in enough tight situations that surviving in the center of long battles came easily to him now.  Most of the time he was able to forget that he was a veteran fighter, that he’d lost count years ago of how many foes had fallen at his hand.  At times like these, those facts never failed to come flooding back to him.

Still, he retained his concentration.  He focused on the battle, on the task at hand.   _Stay alive.  Contain the threat.  Protect the soldiers if you can._

A flash of white whistled past Anders’ left eye.  He turned his head and watched as yet another demon joined the fallen ranks of its kin, a wicked, serpentine dagger buried to the hilt in its chest.  Barely a second later, a set of pale, nimble fingers plucked the weapon easily from the wound.  In the blink of an eye, Cole disappeared into the chaos once again.

Anders let go of the thought of the boy and returned all of his concentration to his spellcasting.  He could not waver now.  The battle had been raging for the better part of an hour, and not once had the Song risen above the din of the fighting.  His blood still ran hot, but not hot enough for concern.  He needed to keep it that way.

More demons continued to climb out of the Fade rift in the center of the hall.  A cluster of them had gathered and was advancing toward the mage, drawing so much attention to himself in the center of his ring of death.

Anders summoned a large boulder and hurled it into the center of the group of demons.  It exploded in a shower of pebbles when it met a fireball that he had not conjured.

The burning corpses fell to the ground, and through the smoke an impossible figure emerged.

As soon as he saw her, Anders felt as though he had just come up for air for the first time since he started this whole blasted mess.  Her black hair was just the same as it had been, thick and wavy where it bounced around her shoulders, a nuisance where it swept over her eyes, the same startlingly clear blue that used to shine like a beacon in the darkness for him.  She looked thinner, but still she stood tall and strong, her familiar figure visible beneath the tattered tunic and trousers she wore.  Even her lopsided grin and the challenging twinkle in her gaze when their eyes locked across the battlefield was exactly the same.   _How many have you got, Anders?_ it asked.

Hawke, _his_ Hawke, strode out of the rift and came running toward him.

And that was when he noticed that something was wrong.

She wasn’t wearing her armor, not all of it.  The infernal breastplate that made it impossible to kiss her properly was still strapped to her chest and the hand that carried her father’s staff still sported its gauntlet, but that was all.  The other clothes she wore, the dirty, frayed black trousers, silver men’s tunic and boots did not, from what he recalled, even belong to her.

Something was definitely very wrong.

It wasn’t until she had come closer, much closer, that he realized what it was.  She looked _healthy_.  She had been trapped in the raw Fade for months on end, and yet she appeared happy and healthy.  She was running, grinning, and leaping over the crumpled, disappearing corpses of demons as though they were little potholes in her path to freedom.  She didn’t even appear fazed by the battle raging around her.  The entire scene was like the subject of a bad painting.  Surreal.  Unnatural.

In his distraction, Anders’ concentration had faltered, and with it, the chaotic storm that had been raging around him since the battle began.  Hawke leaped, unimpeded, over the short ring of corpses that surrounded him and straight into his arms, the sudden and forceful collision of their bodies as she slammed into his chest sending him back a step.

Her arms flew around his waist, and her elegant hands grabbed fistfuls of the back of his coat.  “I can’t believe it’s really you,” she half-sobbed into his bloody shoulder.

The raw, unchecked relief in her beautiful voice almost convinced him.  It was so real, so earnest, so desperate that he very nearly believed it.  As his heart splintered in his chest, he wanted to believe.  He wanted to believe more than anything, but this was wrong.

Hawke, _his_ Hawke, would not have stopped fighting.

Once this realization hit, it hit hard and it hit completely.  Suddenly the thin tether of control Anders had retained over himself for the last few years snapped, and he felt Vengeance, or whatever it had become, rip himself, everything he was, away.

The force and swiftness of the transformation released a blast of energy in all directions so powerful that it threw Hawke and all the nearby combatants several feet backward.  Where once Anders the remorseful, lonely healer stood, there now stood a creature of hatred, of rage, of madness.  It borrowed Anders’ shape, his features, but in place of his kind chocolate eyes gaped holes as black and senseless as the Void itself.  His body was intact, but it had become malice given substance, an instrument of death and brutality, its intention swirling in the thick smoke that passed freely through its frame.

In a voice like the wrath of hell, it proclaimed, **_“WE SHALL TAKE YOU AS YOU TOOK HER!  YOUR BLOOD SHALL FLOW LIKE A RIVER UNTO THE ALTARS OF THE OLD GODS, AND OUR VENGEANCE SHALL RISE FROM THE EARTH ON THE WINGS OF DRAGONS!  THE SKY SHALL FALL AND MOUNTAINS SHALL CRUMBLE BEFORE OUR HATRED, AND WE SHALL BUILD A NEW REALM UPON THE BONES OF OUR BETRAYERS!”_**

 


End file.
